


Demolition

by ygrainette



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (ish?), Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Background Femslash, Background Jo/Risa, Bisexual Dean, Bisexual Jo, Canon Compliant, Complete, Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:41:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 115,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2681183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ygrainette/pseuds/ygrainette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2009, Sam and Dean Winchester agree to stay away from each other in an attempt to avoid the Apocalypse. In 2014, as a parallel-universe version of Dean watches, Lucifer - possessing Sam - snaps Dean's neck.</p><p>This is the story of the five years in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angels In The Night

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started life as a one-shot last summer. It then got **wildly** out of hand.  
>  The first few chapters were beta'd by the truly magnificent [at-heart-a-gentleman](http://archiveofourown.org/users/atheartagentleman/pseuds/atheartagentleman), who has also been an invaluable source of support, solidarity and "WTF is wrong with you" throughout. Do please alert me if I left in any Britishisms by mistake. All errors are my own.  
> I [tumble](http://capricorn-child.tumblr.com/), and dearly love feedback.
> 
> This fic is complete & will run to 14 chapters + epilogue. I will post the chapters on alternate days, finishing with chapter 14 + epilogue on Dec 23rd.
> 
>  **Blanket Content Warnings for the entire fic:**  
>  Canon-typical violence, internalised homophobia, alcohol, drug use, all the angst that goes along with a zombie apocalypse, references to child abuse, references to torture. A lot of swearing, inc. 'bitch' & 'whore' although I don't go overboard with those.  
> I will add content warnings for individual chapters as appropriate.
> 
> In this fic I have tried to be as realistic, canon-compliant & in-keeping with the concept of a Croatoan apocalypse as I can. Also, Castiel & Dean's relationship is fucked-up in various ways to various degrees at various points. Accordingly this is NOT a happy story, and the ending is ambiguous. I tell you this to forewarn people, as the fic is ... long ... and I can understand people wanting to know what they are letting themselves in for!
> 
> This is from Dean's POV and I would like to also state for the record that I consider him a somewhat unreliable narrator, and his opinions & actions are not always ones I agree with.

_'I was lost in the dark and you found me. I was hot – so hot – and you gave me ice.'_

* * *

Dean knows it's an angel-dream almost immediately.

There's something about the angel-dreams – how creepily lucid he is, the intensity of the colours, the coherence with which the whole thing hangs together – that always sets them apart from his other dreams, whether hell-nightmare or just collection-of-weird-shit. Since he started having them, since Castiel first started appearing in the night to tell him what to do, or drop the next bombshell, or ( _more and more)_ to have one of their half-at-cross-purposes heart to hearts, he's gotten pretty damn quick at catching on.

It's an angel-dream alright, but he's not in any of the normal spots Cas visits him. Usually he'll be fishing at a lake, or having a beer with the Impala parked by a cornfield somewhere Midwest-looking, something generic but familiar. A Dean-place.

This time, looks like he's in some sort of ... rose garden. Which is emphatically _not_ a Dean-place. And yeah, maybe things between him and Cas have gotten a little intense lately, but that doesn't mean he needs treating like a chick, for fuck's sake.

"Cas, what the hell," he starts, and turns around and freezes.

His brother is standing in front of him. Except it's _not_ his brother, barefoot and all in white, standing under an arbour of climbing red roses, head tilted and eyes wide. It's his brother's face, his brother's stupid haircut, but oh God, oh God, oh God, let this not be happening –

Dread is running through him, ice in his veins, and he doesn't know how he knows, but he most emphatically _does_ , and his mind is veering off in a thousand meaningless directions, so it is quite a surprise when he opens his mouth and hears himself say, "You're not Cas."

"No, Dean," Not-Sam agrees. "But don't be afraid, I am not going to hurt you."

Dean's pretty damn sure he's not imagining the implied _yet_ at the end of that sentence, but Not-Sam is making his skin crawl so much it's hard to focus on anything but how goddamn _crazy_ this is. He'd recognise Sam anywhere, and the resemblance is stunning, but this _isn't_ Sam. Standing too tall and straight, where Sam would slouch to try and offset his height – face too still, none of his brother's neurotic twitchiness – talking too slowly, the edges of Sam's hybrid Southern accent dulled to something milder, softer – all the evidence is pointing toward the same inescapable conclusion, but he's not thinking it. Not yet.

"Then what the fuck are you doing in my head, huh?" It occurs to Dean that yelling at Not-Sam is potentially not the smartest move at this point, but hell, he's been antagonising supernatural sons-of-bitches his whole life and isn't about to stop now.

Not-Sam sighs, and actually reaches out as if to stroke his face. Dean backs up fast, ducking away from the touch, as Not-Sam tilts his head again and says, "Your brother said _yes_ of his own free will. I wanted you to know that –"

The – ( _don't think it_ ) the thing wearing his brother doesn't even flinch when Dean doubles over, a scream of _fuck_ tearing its way out of his throat. No no no –

"I do not lie, I do not deceive. Your brother gave this body to me freely, convinced of the justness of my cause. When you meet _my_ brother, remember that, if you will, Dean."

"Don't say my _name_ ," he says, but he doesn't know why – of all the things that are fucked up about this situation that's hardly the worst – and why isn't he waking up, Christ, why can't he wake up?

Not-Sam is smiling a smile that is hideously unlike his brother's goofy-huge genuine grin or even his polite-tense fake smile. "I will see you soon. With or without Michael, I will see you soon."

And Dean bolts upright in a cheap Tennessee motel bed, slick with cold sweat, the words _go to hell_ on his lips. For a moment he can't process it, the disorientation so total that for a wild split-second he sees the rack, smells the sulphur, certain he's back downstairs himself – the last year or so, that's the shape his panic's always taken. Then it all hits him at once.

Angel-dream. _Your brother said yes._ The thing wearing his brother coming at him, draped in white. Roses. _Your brother said yes_. Bare feet, that godawful Not-Sam smile. _Your brother said yes._ Voice as different from Sam's as Jimmy Novak's is from Castiel's growl.

_Your brother said yes. Your brother gave this body to me._

Oh, shit.

In his haste to get up, get out of bed, he falls flat on his face, sheets still wrapped rope-like around his legs. Kicking free, he yells for Cas, remembers Cas left yesterday to – go do angel things, fuck knows what, but he's not _here_ , dammit.

Calls Cas's mobile, gets the voicemail – of course, of-fucking-course – leaves a message that is probably the wrong side of desperate and needy but can't bring himself to care. "Cas, Cas, get back to the motel, now – I mean, as soon as you can, or else – call me. As soon as you can. Don't. Don't fuck about with this. Please. Just. Yeah. Bye."

He paces once around the room, then calls Bobby.

"It's three in the morning, this better be good."

Bobby's sleep-deprived snarl barely registers. "Where's Sam?" The words fall over each other in their haste to leave his mouth.

"What? Dean, are –"

" _Do you know where Sam is or not?_ "

Heavy pause on the other end. Maybe he got a bit too loud, but Christ, he's entitled to something of a freak-out at this stage. Then Bobby says, slowly, "I know where he is, more or less, but I gotta ask – it's been six months, what are you –"

For crying out loud. They don't have time for this. "Sam said _yes_ , okay?" Dean snaps out. "He told Lucifer _yes_ , and I need to know where he _is_ , I mean _we_ need to know where he is. Because – I don't know, but shit is about to go down. Okay? So just fucking tell me where he is, alright?"

And Bobby says, far too calmly, "Son, you're not making a lick of sense," and Dean wants to scream, because of course Bobby doesn't know squat about the whole true-vessels-for-Michael-and-Lucifer shit, neither he nor Sam manned up for that particular conversation.  So now he has to give the old man the run-down, made harder by the fact he's so wired he feels like he's overdosing on speed, heart racing, so tense even breathing's hard, thoughts spinning unstoppably through his head.

It seems to take hours to get the story out coherent enough that Bobby understands. Then, finally, _finally_ he says, "Sam's up hunting demons in Detroit, last I heard. You gonna check it out?"

"Yeah – no – damn. I don't know. I gotta, I gotta talk to Cas first."

Dean's gotta hold onto that slim, slim chance Cas will turn around and say, _no, it's not true, it was a lie, an illusion_. Or if not, that he'll at least pull some neat solution out his feathery ass, one that doesn't involve wasting Sam in the process.

"Okay – just don't do anything stupid, you hear me? Not without telling me first. You got that?"

"I got it," Dean says, and hangs up and puts his face in his hands and tries to breathe normally. For a moment downing a shot of whisky or two ( _or knocking back a couple of the Valium he has squirreled away for emergencies_ ) seems like a good idea, just to try and get back on some kind of even keel. Calm himself down a little.

Then again, his stomach's lurching like he's gonna throw up already, and if he's drunk or stoned when Cas turns up, he'll go all disappointed and give Dean the sad doe eyes, and he cannot handle that right now. Stupid angel and his stupid pretty eyes and his stupid sad face.

And it's just as he's thinking this – of course it is – that the air suddenly tenses and shudders with the beat of formless wings, and he feels the room fill up with his angel's presence.

He jumps up even as Cas is murmuring his usual _hello, Dean_. He's materialised so close to Dean that even with the way things are between them, he'd be getting a personal space lecture if Dean wasn't preoccupied with ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer.

As it is, the nearness is kinda reassuring, and he just grabs Cas by the shoulders, says, "Lucifer – Sam – is it true?"

Whatever Cas says flies straight over his head, doesn't register at all, because he takes one look at Cas's face and knows. Oh fuck, he knows. It's written all through the quiet turn-down of his mouth, the regretful slouch, the slight hesitation, and it's shining in those goddamn doe eyes.

Then Dean pulls away and runs for the bathroom, and then he throws up into the toilet, violent, raw, while Castiel strokes the back of his neck and he tries to pretend he isn't crying. His brother may have spent his whole life making terrible decisions, but never, never in a million years did he think Sam could be _this_ stupid.

But he is, and now he's turned John Winchester's last words into a fucking prophecy.

"I'm sorry," Cas says from above him, and Dean can't even tell if he wants to punch him or kiss him or maybe just hide himself in him and never crawl back out.

* * *

 

It's in Arizona, two months before Lucifer steps into Dean's dreams dressed all in white and Sam, that things between Dean and Cas shift. Start to take on the momentum that will draw them together, slowly circling in toward each other in a years-long arc, until they share clothes and beds and the ends of sentences.

It's late July, the mercury reads well over a hundred, and they're hunting a particularly inventive demon that's raising ghosts to do its dirty work. All the interviews, the sneaking around, the research, formulating a plan over too-warm beer in a shitty motel room, it all passes Dean by in a heat haze. These last four months, hunting with Cas, it's all felt a bit surreal, a little like his angel-dreams always do, but out here under the scorching desert sun, he feels like everything is a mirage. Not just Cas but the whole damn world.

When one of the ghosts interrupts his salt-and-burn spree to hurl him into a solid stone wall and then take a slice out of him with a chef's knife, it starts feeling much less like a mirage.

Through some small miracle of sheer bloody-mindedness, he manages to finish torching the last grave, then collapses against the nearest headstone, trying futilely to stem the bleeding from his leg. Can't get much pressure on it because his right shoulder is a screaming ball of pain, probably dislocated, and he's still all punchy and dizzy from getting slammed into that damn wall.

All in all, it's lucky Cas shows up when he does, with enough angel mojo left after smiting the demon to teleport them both back to the motel.

Dean manages to convince the angel to patch him up here instead of schlepping out to a hospital where they'll only ask questions and won't let him drink on the painkillers. Ends up sprawled on the bed in just his boxers while Cas stitches up his thigh. And normally he might be worried this is getting a little too weird, maybe a little too gay, but fuck, there's so much blood and it's so, so hot because _of course_ the AC is broken.

It seems to take for-fucking-ever to stitch the gash –it's nearly six inches long, curving around his left thigh, gonna make a pretty new addition to his scar collection, alright. And on top of that, it's not like Cas is exactly an artist at this kind of thing, Dean's pretty sure he's butchering it even worse than he would do. No time to be picky, though. Caspar the homicidal ghost might have ( _thank God_ ) missed his femoral artery, but he still bled enough that his jeans are completely ruined, they've probably lost the motel room deposit, and he's feeling scarily light-headed.

Finally, _finally,_ the stitches are done. Cas looks up at him with this deep frown of concern, maybe regret, the stupid angel's probably feeling all guilty he can't just magic Dean into one piece any more. Like he doesn't realise that without him Dean would probably have bled out in that cemetery by now.

He rasps, "Thanks, Cas," and _God_ his throat is so dry, it hurts to speak.

Cas frowns, looks down at the horrendous, uneven, life-saving pig's ear he's made of Dean's thigh, shakes his head regretfully. "I hurt you," he says, like Dean getting hurt is a tragedy and not his everyday life, like it's the worst thing he can think of.

"Yeah, well." Dean manages to haul himself into a rough sitting position, and for a moment everything spins and it takes an effort of will not to faint. He's not gonna faint, goddammit, he doesn't faint, he's not a fourteen-year-old going hungry so Sammy can eat, not any more. The world obediently rights itself, the colours seep back into his vision, and he tells Cas, "You're gonna hurt me again, cuz I need you to shove my shoulder back in."

From the look on his face you'd have thought he'd told Cas to murder a puppy. "I could bring you to a hospital –"

"Fuck _off_." Swear to God, Castiel's like a billion years old but sometimes it's like dealing with a five-year-old. "Just shove my fucking shoulder back in and be done with it already. Jesus Christ."

_That_ gets him a reproving look and a mutter about blasphemy, but at least Cas moves around, lays his hands, soft-skinned but steel-strong, on Dean's shoulder. One front, one back, like he's told, and Dean closes his eyes, expecting a countdown like Sam always did: _on three_ , he'd say, and sometimes it was a lie and sometimes it wasn't, so he never knew when to tense up.

Except Cas doesn't count him in, just gives one swift sharp push with no warning, and the pain and the blood loss and the unbearable heat are altogether too much, and Dean passes out.

When he comes to, there are bottomless blue eyes hovering over him, and the hot air is a weighted blanket over him, pinning him to the sheets, stifling. Pain is pulsing through his shoulder, his leg, and his mouth is so dry, so dry. Breathing is an effort. For a moment he can't remember – where is he, what's happened, where's _Sam_?

Then a dark-gravel voice says, "Dean," and he feels a hesitant touch at his temple, and he remembers.

He tries to say, "Cas," but his throat won't work, scraped raw by the desert.

Cas is staring at him in that intense, angel-fierce, way of his. Like Dean's some puzzle he can't quite piece together, and it's always a surprise to him that Cas keeps on trying. "What can I do? Dean, how do I help you?"

"Ice," he manages to drag out through his parched mouth. Asking for help has always come hard to him, always chafed at his pride, but this is _Cas_ , and he'd sell his soul all over again for a glass of ice water.

The blue eyes soften at the corners, and there's a gentle trail of fingers down the side of his face, his neck. Then the bed shifts as Cas stands up, and everything fades to black again.

Next thing he knows, there's a hand supporting his head, curling gently round his neck, and concerned eyes, so blue, and then – oh God – cold water at his lips. Nothing's ever tasted so sweet before, not ever, and he hears himself let out a little whimpering moan, and he doesn't even care, because there's water in his mouth, his throat, and he can breathe again. There's ice, chasing the pitiless heat away, and he's so thankful he could cry.

Cas moves a little, fingers stroking through the hair at Dean's nape, makes a small sound like a sigh. He's sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg out, helping hold Dean's head up, and when the water in the cup is gone, he runs an ice cube tenderly over his cracked lips. Then he leans down, refills the cup, and there's more water, cold and delicious.

"I got you ice," Cas murmurs, and suddenly Dean is hit by a wave of bone-deep gratitude, ( _hell let's call it what it is_ ) of honest love, stronger than he can ever remember feeling for anyone other than his family. And Mom's gone, Dad's gone, Sam is somewhere out of reach, but Castiel is here. His angel.

_You pulled me out of Hell_. He feels almost feverish, drugged and floating. _You pulled me out of Hell, I was lost in the Pit and you saved me, you gave up Heaven and you believed in me, you gripped me tight and you got me ice._

His left hand, the one that he can move without agony in his shoulder, finds Cas's wrist, wraps gently around it. It's slim, should feel fragile beneath his touch, but this is Cas, and Cas is so strong, stronger than Dean can understand, strong enough that he can lean on him and not fear to break him, but not so strong he won't lean back in turn.

When the second cup of water is gone, Dean says, "I need to sleep," tightening his grip on Cas's wrist, trying to say, _stay with me_ , without words.

And he's so glad, pathetically glad, when Cas lowers his head down, still stroking his nape ever so gently, and his other hand comes to rest at the base of his throat. Sleep is already coiling around his mind, and he's still woozy from blood loss, so it feels like the most natural thing in the world to shift closer, press his face against Cas's leg, cover Cas's hand with his own. In the morning Dean's cheeks will burn red and he'll make Cas do his confused head-tilt when he scoots away so fast he nearly falls out of bed, but right now he feels safer than he ever has since before his deal came due and he went to Hell.


	2. Heavyweight Showdown In Detroit

_'The sky is cracked like porcelain and all the souls they rose and marched again.'_

* * *

Bobby and Ellen managed to talk him into taking one of Bobby's patched-up wrecks, leaving his gorgeous, ever faithful, oh so unmistakeable baby back in Sioux Falls. Bobby's under strict orders on how to take care of her, and he knows a thing or two about cars, and if Dean trusts anyone with the Impala, it's him, but still. That car has been the only real home he's had since he was four years old, and through the last few months –no one riding shotgun, except when Cas flapped in every now and then, the Sam-shaped silence like a phantom limb – it's been an anchor of familiarity keeping him from going totally batshit.

Now he's driving some godforsaken blue Ford that smells all wrong, and yeah, the Harvelles' truck is there in his rear-view mirror, and Cas is sitting to his right in that tan trenchcoat, quietly radiating that weird angel presence he's always had, but it's all wrong. Everything's gone wrong. He's driving to Detroit, and they might say they're trying to take down another Horseman ( _the pale one this time, Jesus, his life can't get weirder_ ), but they all know they're actually going to see with their own eyes if Sam really has become the bad guy. And the sky is black with cloud and streaked by lightning, and he knows in his bones that everything is wrong.

How did they get here? Just how in the hell did they get here?

Castiel tried to talk them all out of it, but if Dean read him right – and he thinks by now he's gotten pretty good at reading between the lines of Cas's pauses and squints and head-tilts – his heart wasn't in it. Probably knew that, half a year of radio silence be damned, you can't just take something like this on trust from the angelic rumour mill and one insane nightmare. It's practically a matter of principle. Dean trusts Cas, he even trusts his own fucking angel-dream, but he's lived his life by the credo of _seeing is believing_ and he has to _see._

And, hell. They're kinda sticking their heads into the lions' den here, so if the worst happens, there's a fairly decent chance he can arrange it so he won't have to live too long knowing his brother gave himself over to the Devil.

There's another roll of thunder, another spectacular crack of lightning, and he snorts with sudden dark humour, "Every cloud has a silver lining."

Cas squints at him sideways, but doesn't say anything, thank God. Been pretty quiet overall since he saw Dean curled over a motel-room toilet a couple nights ago, crying and vomiting and hyperventilating. Most likely too disgusted by that particular pathetic little display.

They drive for a while in silence, the way they have since they crossed the Michigan state line. It was about then Dean became too tense for music. He'd brought his cassettes along, Metallica and Led Zep and Kansas to psych himself up, but as they hit the state line _Stairway to Heaven_ started playing, and that had always been Sammy's favourite Zeppelin song, and after that the music was a bust. Too much history coiled up inside the spools of magnetic tape, the beautiful and the painful, and it had to stop, because he needs to not feel.

If Sam has become Lucifer, then he's nothing but another monster that has to be ganked. And Dean can't hold onto that thought when he's remembering prank wars in the Impala and beers under the Great Plains sky and twenty-seven years of being ready to die for his brother.

So no music. Just an ominous heavy silence broken only by thunder and his breathing ( _not Cas's, creepy angel motherfuckers don't need to breathe_ ).

They turn off from the highway to head toward Detroit, and Dean's knuckles are white on the steering wheel. Ellen changes lane to bring her truck up alongside their pansy-ass Ford, Jo raises a hand to mock-salute him, and he points a finger and pretends to shoot her, because it might be Armageddon but when Jo Harvelle fucks with him, he gives as good as he gets. She grins at him briefly, bright, and he has to look away, mouth suddenly dry, and says, "Hey Cas, listen up for a sec."

"I'm listening, Dean."

He glances over at the angel, who is looking more _angel_ than he has in months, more Castiel ( _who shattered glass with a word and sent him decades back in time with a touch_ ) than Cas ( _who rides shotgun and stitches his wounds but can't fix his own tie_ ). Dean swallows hard. Tries for casual. "If this thing goes balls up, if shit hits the fan, if anything happens to me –" Even in his peripheral vision he can tell Cas is starting to glare, and he says quickly, "Look after Ellen and Jo, will you? I mean, they'll look after – just, y'all look after each other, you hear?"

Cas is definitely glaring now. "Nothing will happen to you," he says, and there's a certainty in his voice Dean hasn't heard, oh, since before Cas stuck a giant middle finger up at Heaven. Which. Huh.

He wants to tell him it's some grade-A stupid to put your faith in Dean not fucking up, but that's what Cas has been doing as long as they've known each other, and he doesn't think he's gonna appreciate being called on it right now. Instead he plasters on his best fake grin, perfected on Dad and Sam and countless teachers and doctors and cops across thirty-one years, and says, "Well, no, I'm just saying, _if –"_

And Castiel says in his full-force, angel-stern, _I-pulled-you-out-of-Hell-I-can-throw-you-back-in_ growl, "Nothing will happen to you, Dean. I won't let it."

Sarcasm and back-talk run in Dean's veins like blood, but that's a tone, like John Winchester's when his blood was up or the drink was in him, when he was _sir_ and never _Dad_ , that after years of experience he just does not fuck with. "Well, whatever you say," he says, shrugs, and doesn't say that Cas is probably a billion years old and has seen things Dean can't imagine, but he's also an idiot. The way Dean was an idiot when he believed nothing would ever hurt Sam because he wouldn't let it.

Doesn't say any of that, just keeps his eyes on the rain-lashed road to Motor City. Cas stays unbreathingly quiet. Dean does his best not to think about anything at all.

* * *

 

When they pull over and get out of the cars onto a too-empty Detroit street, all the hairs down the back of Dean's neck are standing on end, his skin prickling with static. The air tastes thick, infected, in his throat. It might just be his imagination, but he doubts it. There's a sort of extra sense you get after a couple decades hunting that tells you, nope, that house is just spooky-looking, but this one is the real deal. Right now his Spidey senses are going utterly fucking _haywire_.

As she walks over to them, Ellen runs her hands up her arms and says, "I don't know a thing 'bout the Devil, but something ain't right out here." He says a fervent _amen_ and starts loading shotguns with rock salt.

Between what Dean brought along from his stash in the Impala's trunk, the Harvelles' impressively well-stocked truck, and the bits and pieces they borrowed from Bobby's small arsenal, plus Cas and that slim silvery blade of his, they're pretty much armed to the teeth. Guns, holy water, catering-size sacks of salt, Ruby's knife in his boot –still not enough for him to feel safe. Hard to think of a time he's had more weapons on him, but, fuck, what he wouldn't do to have the Colt right now.

Wasn't just a weapon, that gun was a good luck charm. Not a thing's gone right since that damn uppity English bitch stole it.

While Dean and Jo and Ellen gear up, running through the last-minute checks, Cas just stands there, squinting and looking from side to side, brow deeply furrowed.

"Whatcha see, Cas?" Dean asks, pretty sure that's his watching-something-invisible gaze, not the more normal I-understand-nothing-of-this-place variety.

The reply isn't exactly reassuring. "Reapers. Hundreds of them."

"Well, that's just great."

Jo slams the truck door shut, locks it. "So, you got a plan at all? Or we just gonna go down the all guns blazing route?"

Dean shrugs, looks over at Cas, who says, "The reapers are all facing the same direction." He gestures with his blade to their right. Just visible between apartment blocks is the spire of a church, an old one from the looks of it. Somehow that doesn't seem like a coincidence.

Now they have a target, and his mind slots back into the familiar groove of analyse and improvise, just another seat-of-his-pants hunt. "Right, Cas, you zap yourself up there, check it out. We'll follow along on foot, maybe split up, come at it from two sides."

Cas finally looks away from the reapers to pin him down with a stare. "Stay with Ellen or Jo. I can't find you on your own."

"Just follow the gunshots, kid," Ellen says dryly. Cas just tilts his head at her.

"Yeah, I know," Dean tells him, smacks his shoulder in reassurance. One last almost-glare, and with a rip and gust of wind, the angel vanishes. "Well, that will never stop being creeptastic. Let's move."

They take a right turn, heading towards the old church down streets that are completely silent, deserted. Since entering the city, they haven't seen a single soul, just shops with the lights on and doors open, empty cars lining the roads. The place is practically the fucking Marie Celeste. Dean's trigger finger is getting mighty itchy – if they're going to end up neck-deep in demons, he wishes they'd just get on with it.

There's a fork in the road, and after a quick, hushed discussion, they split up, Ellen taking the left fork, and Dean and Jo the right. By now the eerie silence is really starting to freak Dean out – Detroit was lighting up with demonic omens like Hell's version of the Fourth of July, but now they get here, not a peep? This is beyond suspicious. It's a trap. Obviously, it's a trap.

John Winchester's voice echoes in his ears. Fall of '94, Maine, bellies to the ground, creeping up toward the lair of a pack of chupacabra. Damn things had had them on the run, smart for their kind, as much predators as prey in this hunt of theirs. Fifteen and pretending he wasn't sick with fear, whispering, _I think it's a trap._ And Dad had just nodded and drawled, _Boy, there's some traps you just gotta spring._

"Why do I feel like this is too easy?" Jo says, low through her teeth. They're creeping down the street sideways, backs to one another. If it weren't for the heaviness of the air and the static crawling over his skin, it would feel absurd to Dean, like ( _Sam and me_ ) kids playing at soldiers. As it is –

"Because this _is_ too damn easy," he mutters in reply.

It's so quiet he can hear Jo swallow. "I think maybe we should," she starts, and he never gets to hear what she thinks they should do, because at that moment the church they are heading towards blows up. 

The explosion throws them both off their feet, knocking all the air from Dean's lungs. And then he's struggling to get to his feet, chest burning for want of oxygen, ears ringing as the world slip-slides, his balance shot to pieces. He can see Jo yelling something, can't hear her – there's blood in her hair, dust on her face –

And now, of course, _now_ the demons are everywhere: coming out of doors, windows, the mouths of alleys, black-in-black eyes in every direction. He fires, and fires, and fires again, can't hear the shots, only the kick of the shotgun, and he's hitting them, even dizzy and winded and deafened by tinnitus his aim is true, but there are just too _many_ of the bastards. They're closing in on him, and he can't see Jo – where the hell can she have gone? – and then he's fumbling for Ruby's knife and trying to yell for Cas, and then something cracks him round the side of the skull and everything is black.

* * *

 

Dean jerks awake as someone slaps his face. For a long moment everything is blurred and spinning unbearably – he tries to put a hand out and he can't – calls for Cas and only croaks – then the world slips into painful focus.

He's in some kind of dank, gloomy room, with demons at the door. Tied to a chair. The side of his face is sticky with blood, pretty sure he's got a split lip as well. Breathing in hurts, tight and sharp, probably a cracked rib or two. His head is pounding like the worst hangover he's ever had and then some. There's a woman leaning over him. Her eyes are black in her grinning white face.

"Can you hear me?" she asks, sounding gleeful. "You in there, Dean? Testing, testing, one two three."

His ears are still ringing painfully, but he can make out the words. "I hear you, bitch," he spits out.

She pouts and tilts her head. "Now, that's not nice, and we were such good friends."

It doesn't take him long to put the pieces together. Lately, things have been making a certain sick kind of sense, a Murphy's Law kind of sense, so _of course_ she'd be back to fuck him over and gloat as she does it, yet again. "Meg, I swear to God I will kill you."

Suddenly she's sitting on him, straddling his legs, one hand yanking his head back by the hair, the other tracing a straight razor along his jawline. There's a wild second of blood-red panic when he could swear he sees white eyes and hears that nasal, bloodied purr – but no. No. Get a fucking grip, Winchester, this is not Hell but Detroit. He closes his eyes, forces himself to breathe normally, tries to think of anything but the cold blade skating over his throat.

Meg's voice is alive with joy, bursting at the seams with it, as enraptured as any street-corner evangelist. "No, no, no. Your God is gone. Dead. But _mine_ –" she sighs against his ear, licks it, and his eyes fly open because this is too much, too much and he's seeing Hell again behind his eyelids. "My God is here. He's gonna bring us our promised land. And it's all thanks to little Sammy – you must be _so proud."_

He jerks involuntarily, wrists straining against the ropes. That makes Meg giggle, and he sets his jaw and holds still, because fuck, maybe he's going to die being sliced up by a demon bitch, but damned if he's gonna make it _funny_ for her. As she strokes the razor up over his cheekbones, his lips, some kind of demented foreplay, he studies the sigils painted on the walls, the grimy windows, tries to work out if they're Enochian, or something from the Key of Solomon, or what. Doesn't work too well, he's furious and terrified and his brain ain't too sharp even when he's not about to get turned into a _Sweeney Todd_ extra.

"He's coming to see you, Dean," Meg tells him, pulling his head around and leaning in so close that he can't look away. All he can see is that smug, smug, face, and her sulphur breath is in his mouth, and her hair brushing his cheeks, and he's never wanted to kill anything more. "He's a bit busy right now, but as soon as he's done, he's coming here, and I promise you, we are gonna have _so_ much fun with you, baby. Just me, and you, and Lucifer – oh, and Sammy, too."

Hearing that name, that childhood nickname for his baby brother ( _who was his best friend and the albatross around his neck and his reason for living all at once_ )rolling off that Hell-corrupted tongue again, it flips some kind of switch in his mind. His vision swims red and before his better judgement can voice any kind of protest, he spits in Meg's face.

Point blank range. He sees it hit, just under her left eye, watches it roll down her cheek as her lips skin back in an animal snarl – and then the hand in his hair is pulling with insane, demonic strength, like she's trying to tear his scalp clean off. Her eyes are gleaming and she's grinning now, oh shit, why does he always have to kick the hornets' nest?

"Or maybe, maybe we'll have a little fun _right now._ "

The razor is at his hairline, he can feel it sliding through his skin, the sensation sickeningly familiar. There's blood trickling into his ear, and he's breathing so fast he can't breathe at all, and oh fuck, the bitch is _actually going to scalp him_.

From somewhere on the other side of the room, there is an almighty crash, and for a moment the thought that Meg is about to scalp him is so strong, flashing in Vegas lights through his mind, that Dean doesn't register that the razor has fallen away. Then his brain comes back online and he realises the demon has jumped off him, walking away and yelling, "What the fuck are you _doing_ out there?"

While her attention is elsewhere, he starts squirming his hands, trying to work the knots loose, but they're so tight he's getting pins and needles, come on come on –

Then there's another, even louder crash, and his head snaps up and then his jaw drops. There is a goddamn fire engine shoved halfway through the wall. Even as he stares, its engine revs and it rams the wall again. Brick dust and plaster and broken glass everywhere, Meg is screaming something, and if this is what he thinks it is –

One of the engine's doors opens, and Jo – little Jo Harvelle, who he still thinks of as near-enough a novice, a pretty girl he has to protect – leaps out, a hose in her hands. A hose which then starts spraying out a high-pressure jet of water, which not only bowls over the demon running at her, teeth bared, but throws up coils of foul-smelling steam and leaves him writhing on the floor, howling.

"I'll be damned," Dean breathes. Even tied up and bleeding and stuck in a nest of demons, he knows that this, what he's watching right now? One of the most badass things he's seen in his life.

It takes seconds for Jo and that hose to have every demon in the room on the floor, shrieking in agonised chorus. Then she drops it, and she's running through them, dodging hands that grab, kicking heads, and then she's at Dean's side, and _Christ_ it is a good feeling when the cavalry arrives.

"How bad are you hurt?" She's got a knife out, sawing at the ropes around his wrist.

"Couple broken ribs, concussion maybe – _behind you –_ "

Meg is staggering to her feet, lurching toward them, the razor flashing silver and crimson. Jo spins, pulling a shotgun out of a holster at her hip – slams the butt into Meg's head, one-handed, then her other hand swings up and she shoots the demon in the chest.

Dean finally manages to yank his hands free of their bonds, and Jo grabs his jacket to help him up, and then they're running full tilt for the fire engine. Someone's yelling, Ellen in the driver's seat, leaning out, pulls him up into the cabin, then they're both pulling Jo inside, and Ellen throws them into reverse so fast Dean nearly gets whiplash.

"You alright? You kids alright?"

"We're in one piece, Mom, go go go!"

When he's got his breath back, Dean turns to Jo. She's sitting beside him, head thrown back, gasping for breath. There's blood drying in her hair and down the left side of her face, her knuckles are bloodied and swollen, and she's covered in dirt and new-blooming bruises, but like she told Ellen, she's in one piece. And so is he, more or less, thanks to her. He's grinning, giddy, when he says, "Jo, you are one awesome motherfucker. You both are. A fire hose of holy water? God _damn_."

Jo grins back, holds out a grimy hand for a high-five, while Ellen shakes her head. "Thanks, hon, but we ain't out of the woods just yet, don't count your chickens." As if he didn't know it.

He slaps Jo's hand, then something he really should have remembered earlier crosses his punch-drunk mind, and he starts patting himself down. "Shit. _Shit._ I've lost that fucking knife. Meg must have taken the damn thing –"

"We got you out alive, I'd call that a fair trade," Jo says, and he grits his teeth because it's not even close, and she's a smart girl, should be able to see that, for God's sake.

Ellen takes a left turn, and Dean's heart stops.

There's a man standing in the middle of the road, facing them, tall and long-haired and calmly smiling, a man Dean would know anywhere. He's not wearing white this time, but a plaid shirt and worn-out jeans, and they are about to mow him down.

Before he can think, before he can process, running on pure instinct, Dean is grabbing at Ellen, at the steering wheel. He's yelling, _don't hit Sam, don't hit him_ , and Jo is trying to pull his arm back, and Ellen swerves, fish-tailing a corner, and they didn't hit him, and he can't breathe.

"That was Lucifer – _Lucifer,_ Dean, you gotta understand," Jo is saying. She's leaning on him, doing her best to shove him back against the seat, eyes wide. "Not Sam. Not anymore."

"I know that, I do." He clenches his fists, slick with cold sweat. There's no more pretending that dream was an illusion or the angels are wrong, that much he knows. But some things run too deep in him to be touched by just knowing, or maybe it's just him being too weak ( _as always_ ) to face the darkness in his brother. "I just – I saw him – "

On his other side, Ellen makes a vaguely sympathetic noise in her throat. "Damn near gave me a heart attack, and all, him just standing there. Jesus."

Jo seems to think it's safe to let go of him, sits back, looks around. "Think we left the cars down that way, Mom."

The streets are empty again, and now he's coming down off of that vertiginous peak of adrenaline, his skin is starting to crawl. It can't be this easy, the other shoe is going to drop and they're gonna get ambushed again – and where the fuck is Cas? Part of him, a part that believes in his angel to the very marrow, tells him the creepy son of a bitch will be just fine, of course he will, nothing stops Cas, come on, man.

Another part, a larger part, is cataloguing all the tiny signs throughout the last months that Cas's Grace is leaving him, inch by inch. That cynical part is saying, after all, everything else has gotten fucked up, why the hell would Dean get to keep Cas? Not like angels are incorruptible, immune to the way life will drag you down into the grave if you're lucky or the gutter if you're not. Lucifer was once an Archangel and is now the Devil, and Cas is just an angel, and less of one than he used to be, at that.

"Oh, thank God –" They're back on the road where they parked their cars what feels like days ago. Ellen slams on the brakes, brings the fire engine screeching to a halt, and they all pile out.

The Harvelles run for their truck, Ellen trying to drag Dean with her, telling him he's in no condition to drive, and he's a little dizzy, yeah, so it takes him a moment to get the words out. "Ellen, no, I'm not going without Cas."

She stops dead, whirls around to stare him down. "Dean, this is not the time for your heroics, get in the goddamn car." She's using her best shouting voice, the one that could bring a roomful of drunk and rowdy hunters to a contrite standstill, no questions asked.

The world is too quiet and his ears are shrilling and he is sick, sick inside, and so afraid, but he knows this one thing and he all but screams it. "I am _not_ leaving here without Cas."

Ellen is pale and drawn, and her cheeks are streaked with blood, and she gets right up in his face, grabs him by the lapels. "He can teleport, you can't, and he can't find you if you're alone. _Get – in – the car_."

She's his mother's kind eyes and his father's barked-out orders all at once, and it is all too much. The fight goes out of him; he ducks his head and lets her push him into backseat of the truck. He doesn't protest that he can drive fine, doesn't care that he's leaving Bobby's Ford behind – Meg took his weapons, and somehow he doesn't think he'll be wanting to listen to much of _Led Zeppelin IV_ anymore. Or much of anything, come to that.

In the rear-view mirror, Jo's eyes are on him, wide and concerned, and he looks away. He's fucked up and he's failed and he's falling apart, but he doesn't have to let her see it. Bad enough that she and Ellen nearly died, that they'll have to watch the Apocalypse break the world apart – all because he couldn't stop his brother.

There are tears prickling at his eyes now, and he digs his fingernails into his palms, and grits his teeth, and wills them away. Stares out the window, unseeing, as Ellen points them toward South Dakota and puts her foot to the floor.

Fifteen minutes later, the air ruffles and beats with the sound of feathers that aren't there, and Cas is sitting beside him. His hair is wild and his eyes are dark and his absurd trenchcoat is spattered with crimson, but he's there, he's alive, he's _there._ All Dean can do is grab fistfuls of that coat, bury his face in his shoulder, and breathe in his sharp-sweet angel smell.

* * *

 

When they get back to Bobby's, it's the middle of the night, but he's awake and waiting. He helps them clean their injuries – and really, they got off lightly. Dean and Jo may have blood all over their faces, but that's just because even shallow head wounds always bleed dramatically. Bobby stitches up Meg's long razor-cut to his hairline, quick and neat, gives him a good few shots of whiskey to help him through it and _put a bit of colour back in you, son_.

Then Jo starts giving Bobby the blow-by-blow while he and Ellen cook, bickering constantly as they do, and Cas is off being mournful and angelic somewhere, so no one notices Dean slip out.

It's raining, but only faintly, just enough to ghost over his skin, quiet and insidious. There's no moon, and it's so dark that if he didn't know his way around Singer Salvage blindfold, he'd be kinda screwed.

He meanders his way through the piles of scrap, whistling tunelessly. His blood is singing with too much whiskey on a too-empty stomach, and the crash after hours of mainlining adrenaline, and despair – but also with purpose.

Is there anything left of Sam? When Lucifer cracked him open, and crawled inside, was he burned away – or is he still in there, like Jimmy Novak was, chained to a comet? When Ellen nearly ran him down with a fire engine, did he see Dean screaming at her not to?

Did he care?

Will Dean care when Michael razes Sam ( _Lucifer, Lucifer, they are one and the same now_ ) to dust?

He finds his baby, slumps against her, leans his forehead against the cold metal and breathes deep. Six months he's spent running from and dreading this, but if there's any other way out, he can't see it.

Out. He just wants out.

The keys are jingling in the lock of the car door when hands, viciously strong hands, grip his arms and throw him across the yard like he weighs nothing more than a ragdoll. He hits the gravel, hard, on his broken ribs, and curls into the pain, spluttering, and then he's hauled up by his jacket, lifted off his feet, toes just brushing the ground.

Castiel's face is feral with anger, eyes blazing even through the dark. "I never thought you were a coward," he snarls, and that faith, that irrational foolish faith his angel has always had in Dean, has gone and that's just too much. On top of everything else, now _Cas_ is looking at him the way Dad did after the shtriga, and he can't take it.

"Cas, I – my brother, he said _yes_ , and I, I can't – what else is there? What else am I supposed to do, Cas?" He's begging and he knows it, and his cheeks are wet and he doesn't care. The worst has already happened and he doesn't give a fuck anymore. He just wants this weight off his shoulders, his fate out of his hands, someone to take over and let him fall into oblivion.

Cas spins, slams him against the Impala. He's never been great at personal space, and maybe Dean's got a little too used to it, let him get away with it too much lately, but this is something else. He's pinning Dean with his whole body, pressing them together so closely he can see Cas's pupils dilate, feel his breath on his cheeks as he growls, "I gave up heaven for you. I lost _everything_ for you, every one of my brothers and sisters, everything I was created for, I'm losing my Grace, because of _you_! And you want to throw it all away?"

The air is tight, charged with fury. Behind them Dean sees the lights in Bobby's windows stutter, the piled-up cars creaking in a wind that isn't a wind – it's Cas. Cas so angry he's leaking excess power, even with his angel batteries running down.

Dean's mouth is dry. He's never been more aware of just how alien Cas is, and he should be more afraid but he just can't find it. Not after all that's happened. "I – you don't understand. Sam, I can't, not without him."

"And yet I'm supposed to go on without you?" Cas shakes him, hard enough his teeth snap together and things tilt alarmingly, those shots and the remnants of his concussion coming back to haunt him. "Is that it? _Dean?_ "

That tone demands an answer, and with Cas bleeding power everywhere, he's not gonna fight it. "You don't need me," he says numbly.

It's nothing but the truth, but Cas's eyes flare and he bites out, " _I rebelled for you._ I need you."

Despite it all, he laughs at that. "Cas, no one needs me."

Those impossible steel-in-silk fingers are digging painfully into his arms, Cas's weight crushing the air from his lungs. His voice is cold with absolute certainty, the implacable, terrifying conviction of a creature created for faith. "The world needs you. I rebelled because if there is anyone –" He shakes Dean again, hard, "- _anyone_ , who can stop Lucifer, it is you."

The world is swaying, shifting under his feet. "But, but Lucifer is _Sam_ –"

"So you'll let half the planet die? Your brother's gone and you'll stand by and watch the Apocalypse because you cannot bear to kill his vessel?" Cas is screaming now, louder than he's ever heard him, and one of the Impala's windows shatters, and Dean is frozen in place, transfixed. "I have seen your soul, Dean Winchester, and you are more than this. This – _selfishness._ "

He steps back, lets go, and Dean collapses to the floor, legs refusing to hold him. His hands dig into the gravel, and he stares at Cas's scuffed black dress shoes, and suddenly the centre of his world shifts. As long as he can remember, his brother has been the fulcrum and the axis and the origin of his universe – but Sam let his destiny win, the taint Azazel seeded into him at six months old coming to fruition and erasing Dean's brother to make way for Lucifer. Sam is gone, but there's still Bobby and Ellen and Jo and seven billion innocents with no idea the Devil walks among them. There's still the Colt, somewhere, the trigger that always fit his hand so perfectly, out there waiting for him to claim it again.

There's still Cas.

And maybe he's not so much of an angel these days, but Dean would trust him to the ends of the earth, and if Cas believes in him, maybe that's enough.

He rasps out, "Cas. Cas. You're right. I'm sorry. You're right."

A hand reaches out, helps him to his feet. Dean can barely lift his eyes to meet Cas's, and when he does, they are so wide and hopeful it makes his heart hurt. "You ... have changed your mind? You do not wish to become Michael's vessel?" His voice is slow, like he doesn't quite dare to believe it yet.

"You got it, baby," he says, and then he laughs. It's strained and a bit hysterical, but it's been a long fucking day. "We better get looking for that Colt."

Cas smiles, just slightly, just a quirk of lips that are now soft, not hard with rage, and even with everything that's happened, Dean can't help but notice that that angel is too damn pretty for his own good. "You need to rest. Later," he says, and Dean lets himself smile back.


	3. Zachariah Bites Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's like Cas is completely new to the world, sometimes, like a little kid, doing everything for the very first time, and Dean gets to see that. And, yeah, he teases Cas about it ( _worth it to hear Cas try to tease back_ ) but there's something in the way his face lights up, the glimpses Dean gets of a vivid smile, the flicker of curiosity or surprise or fascination in his eyes, the way he just _trusts_ Dean to guide him through it all – it's enough to keep Dean going.

' _Will you sing me to sleep when my ears won't stop ringing? Or will you whisper to me pretty lies as you're leaving_?'

* * *

They leave Sioux Falls three days after Detroit, just the two of them, just Dean and Cas, Cas and Dean ( _names starting to run into one, like Sam-and-Dean_ ), despite everyone else's protests. Bobby had tried to make them stay, said they should wait for Dean's cracked ribs ( _and the lump on the side of his head and the gash down his face_ ) to heal. When that failed he produced a laundry list of questions his research had thrown up for Cas to look at, and an equally long inventory of odd jobs around the house and salvage yard for Dean to take care of.

That last had been a close-run thing. Dean had nearly caved under the seductive pressure of ( _his father_ ) the old man entrusting him with responsibility – but it took him all of fifteen minutes to figure out the jobs were nothing urgent, just something Bobby cooked up in an effort to keep them there. Once he knew Dean was on to him, he threw up his hands, muttered something about damn fool Winchesters, and admitted defeat.

Persuading Ellen and Jo that they were leaving separately, splitting their quartet back into two pairs, that had been a harder ask. Jo alternately sulked and broke out the puppy eyes, and on the third day, while Dean packed up the Impala, she shouted at him until she was hoarse. It was kinda impressive, yeah, he'd give her that, but she was barking up the wrong tree. Back in the day, mean-drunk-John Winchester and fuming-teenage-Sam Winchester used to scream at one another all night long, while Dean hid in the bathroom with the weapons, venturing out to intervene if he thought punches might be thrown or the neighbours were gonna call the cops. You referee enough of _those_ fights, getting shouted at a bit ain't even a blip on the radar.

Ellen, though, she fought dirtier than Jo and Bobby combined. She'd put on her very best I-love-you-but-so-help-me-I'll-box-your-ears, no-nonsense _mom_ voice, and all but orderedhim to keep the team together. As if that wasn't enough she'd also cornered Cas and laid it on thick about how _worried_ she was about Dean, how he _needed_ them around. And fuck, but that had been an awkward conversation afterward, Cas sidling up with a combination of his saddest doe eyes and his most baffled squint, wanting to talk about Dean's _feelings._ Jesus Christ.

But all the persuasion and dirty tricks were never gonna do them any good. When it comes down to it, the only person Dean can stomach the thought of hunting with, now with the freaking Apocalypse hanging over their heads, is Castiel.

The others all got dragged into this mess, if they get hurt on some wild goose chase after the Colt, that's on Dean, but Cas – Cas has always been on board this thing, was from the start, since he got blown up by an Archangel in the name of free will. And anyway, the look Cas got on his face when Dean told him, _I need you and me in the Impala, and that's all,_ that ( _made Dean's heart trip_ ) trumped all of Bobby's logic and Jo's temper and Ellen's coaxing, hands down. Dean's a stubborn son-of-a-bitch on his own, but with an angel backing him up? Yeah, they never had a chance.

Anyway, long and short of it, Sioux Falls is two states in the rearview mirror – they've got zombies in Utah to deal with, what is the world coming to – and it's just Cas sitting shotgun, since the Harvelles are heading south to meet up with Rufus and kill some demons down in Arkansas. They all know damn well that the only reason any of them walked out of Detroit alive is because, for reasons known only to himself, ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer allowed it. No one's brought it up, no one's dared speculate what on earth those reasons might be. There's only one way to deal with the crushing ominous weight of things like that: ignore them, get in the car, and go hunt.

The zombie gig they're headed for in Salt Lake City is small-fry shit compared with, oh, the Devil and armies of demons, but it'll do. For now, all Dean cares about is the soothing purr of his baby's engine, and the chance to gank some undead mothers, and the silent angel next to him. It's tense but peaceful-tense, tense because of the whole End Times thing, not tense the way things were with Sam after Hell, when another argument was always looming on the horizon. The lack of conversation feels calm, companionable, not like a festering wound.

Dean's trying not to dwell on it or look across at the angel every five minutes, but he thinks Cas is maybe staring at him even more intensely than he did before ( _Sam said_ yes) Detroit. His skin is prickling with the unyielding weight of that attention, and he'd swear the feathery freak doesn't look away from him the whole damn fourteen-hour drive. But he doesn't bring up Detroit, or Dean ( _saying_ yes) freaking out at Bobby's, and he changes the radio station when Dean tells him to ( _over and over, every time a song triggers a Sam-memory_ ), and when Dean cracks a dumbass joke or makes a reference he understands, his mouth tweaks up in his new amusement-smile. So, increased staring or no increased staring, it seems they're good.

If Cas doesn't want to mention it, Dean's more than happy to just do his best to act like Detroit and that incident in the salvage yard never happened. Not like denial's ever hurt him before.

As they cross the Utah state line, Dean realises he's got his right arm stretched out, draped over the back of the passenger seat, his fingers curling around the nape of Cas's neck. Cas is still staring at him, but his usual can't-figure-you-out expression has softened out into something else, and when Dean meets his eyes, he smiles, and Dean has to look away then so he doesn't drive off the road. Cas doesn't have the juice to fix him up from that, these days, and fucked if he's gonna bite the dust in a car crash after everything he's survived.

He lets his hand stay where it is. Maybe lets himself stroke the soft dark hair, just a little.

It's dark by the time they arrive in Salt Lake City. Dean's so tired he's ready to keel over, his ribs ache like a motherfucker and his ass is numb, but it almost feels like old times. Could almost be those six months he spent tooling round the country with Cas sometimes sitting next to him, sometimes not, but always comfortingly within reach. And really, as long as he's got his baby and a destination and a partner in crime, he knows what he's doing.

Lucifer and the Colt and the angels and the end of the world, all that shit can wait a few days. In the meantime, there are zombies to gank. Every little helps.

Dean finds a motel that looks to be in the right region of cheap but not roach-infested, pulls over, and briefs Cas on how to book them a room. A look in the mirror tells him that at this point, a dude with zero social skills is gonna go over better than one with a couple dozen stitches and a kaleidoscope of bruises on his face. Also, his breathing's kinda tight ( _almost wishes he'd listened to Bobby_ ) and while Cas is used to how he sounds when he's injured, that's not gonna reassure the receptionist any.

After reiterating for the third time the importance of getting a twin not a double, Dean gives Cas his wallet and lets him go. Six months of hunting with Cas in tow, and the guy can just about be trusted not to give the game away when he pulls out a stolen credit card and a fake ID. This must be how proud mothers feel.

He watches Cas head over toward the motel reception, and his eyes start to drift shut. Shouldn't let his guard down, but fuck it all, he's driven fifteen hours, running on a couple of burgers and a little speed and not much else, and it's not exactly like he sleeps well ( _since Hell_ )these days.

Dean closes his eyes, and just for a moment lets himself slip away.

There's a familiar ruffle-flap-tear beside him, and he starts awake. Adrenaline jack-knifes him upright, reaching for his gun, the fight-or-flight instinct that's always run so close under his skin taking over before he has time to understand why. Because that's normally a good sound, it's a _Cas_ sound and Cas means safety these days – but he hasn't been flapping about so much, not since Detroit, following round after Dean like a shadow – he hasn't been flapping about and oh shit –

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I _startle_ you?"

Voice like oil on water, cloying, sickly, familiar as the burn of alcohol on its way back up, and oh yes, there's that face to match. Fuck, the gun he's holding won't do diddly squat to the son-of-a-bitch ( _his gorgeous engraved Colt M1911, his sweet-sixteenth and his very favourite, but it's the wrong Colt, damn it all_ ) but he's considering shooting anyway. Considering it seriously. It'll do no good, but hell, it might make him feel better.

"You can go fuck yourself, Zachariah," he says, wearing his biggest, nastiest, smile. The one he reserves for cops trying to lock him up, and grabby drunks who won't take hints, and anyone or any _thing_ that threatens his family. The one that's really just him baring his teeth, plain and simple and animal.

Zachariah smiles back at him, and oh, it's all terribly civilised, sitting in the Impala smiling at one another, and it reminds Dean suddenly of Alastair, of Azazel. Of wide dark smiles as he was backed up against a wall, chained to the rack, pinned down and ready to bleed.

"You're a charming little maggot, aren't you?" Zachariah says pleasantly. "Now, why don't you step out of the car and we'll have a little chat."

"I repeat: go fuck yourself." He's mouthing off on autopilot as he glances out the window, trying to figure out exactly how deep in the shit he is. As it turns out, very.

There's no sign of Cas, or the motel, or even any part of Salt Lake City at all. He's sitting in his car in the middle of a blasted, burnt-out plain, the sky above roiling with clouds, ash-black and pus-yellow. Can't tell if it's day or night, the light has a weird red quality to it, making everything look blood-stained. The plain is dotted with clusters of figures, some that look almost human, some wraith-like, made of dark vapour, gathered around – around _racks,_ chains and blades flashing in the eerie too-red light, and what he'd thought was the wind moaning is actually –

No. No, this isn't, this _can't_ be what he thinks it is. Not possible.

Before he registers what he's doing, he has a handful of Zachariah's lapels, hauling him close like he's putting the frighteners on a witness, the barrel of his favourite gun pressed into the angel's jowls. "What the fuck is this? What have you done with Cas?"

Zachariah clicks his fingers, and Dean's stomach nearly betrays him as they teleport out of the Impala – as if getting angel-zapped wasn't enough, he's hit by the _smell._ Sulphur and ozone and rust, burning flesh and stale vomit and rotting meat, death and decay and things he can't name, a smell that sends him reeling back, a smell he thought he'd never scrape out of his nostrils –

"Oh, I think you know _exactly_ where you are, Dean." Smug as a snake, as a demon, and Dean decides right then and there that if it's the last thing he does, he will see Zachariah on the floor, dead like Azazel and Ruby and Alastair.

"Fuck you, this isn't Hell. It's not. It's another of your goddamned _illusions_ –" But it looks like Hell and it sounds like Hell and it _smells_ like Hell, and oh God, where's Cas? Where's that stupid angel when he needs him?

_Come on, Cas, I got my ass thrown downstairs again, need you, buddy, Cas, come on ..._

"Well, strictly speaking, it's the future." Zachariah takes hold of Dean's wrist, pulls the gun out of his hand and throws it away, easy as candy from a baby – and hanging around Cas let him forget just how fucking _lethal_ angels are, that casual strength and cruelty, natural disasters wearing human faces. He's staring into Dean's face, not even playing at amiable now, eyes gleaming cold, fingers tightening on Dean's wrist. He can feel the bones bowing, hairline fractures threatening, and he's biting his lip to blood ( _don't cry out don't flinch don't give him the satisfaction_ ).

"This is what your brother is going to make of the world. Sam's going to bring Hell to Earth, Dean."

Over the suit-clad shoulder, he sees one of the figures turn to face him – all in white, hair caught in the sulphurous breeze, eyes burning in the bloody light, face alight with joy ( _Sam when Dean taught him to ride a bike, gave him_ To Kill A Mockingbird _for his birthday, when his report card read all 'A's, when they set off homemade fireworks on Independence Day)_. The sleeves of his white dress shirt are rolled up, and his hands are dripping gore, stained crimson to the elbow.

"That's not Sam," Dean grates out, but his heart is jumping against his battered ribs and there's bile burning at his throat and this must be it. Going insane. He can't keep it straight – it's just Zachariah fucking with his head, but he can't hold on to that. Not with that blood and brimstone smell and that expression so familiar it breaks his heart.  He closes his eyes, tight. "That isn't my brother, it's not, it's Lucifer, not _Sam_ –"

"Sam said _yes_ ," Zachariah says, and he sounds like the dark, hateful little voice at the back of Dean's mind that keeps him awake nights. "So, yeah, when Hell's on Earth, it'll be Sam's fault. Oh, wait, and _yours_."

"I'm gonna kill you. I'll kill you, you hear me?" Telling himself over and over, _this isn't real_ , digging down and trying for some anger. Come on, where's the rage, the red mist, the snarl of the killer instinct Dad instilled in him – taught him to be a hunter, not some trembling rabbit caught in a trap, come _on._

This was how it always was in Hell, too. Heart-sick with fear, and hating himself for it, for letting them turn him into some pathetic, mewling little coward. And then he'd picked up Alastair's razor –

"Or did you think we'd forget who started the ball rolling? Hm? _Righteous Man_?"

Dean tries to punch him – a left-handed uppercut with all his weight and loathing behind it – and hits what feels like a brick wall. His knuckles scream and grind in protest, and he lets out a gasp before he can stop it, eyes flying wide, only Zachariah's vise-grip on his wrist keeping him in place.

"You and your brother started this, and Sam's been a good boy and got with the program. Now it's your turn."

The bastard is enjoying this. He's fucking _enjoying_ himself. This whole horror show, it's his idea of a good time. "Fuck off and die, you sadistic son-of-a-bitch," he spits out, and then his knees nearly give out as a wave of heat shoots up his arm, radiating out from Zachariah's hand.

It's like having his hand thrust into a furnace, he can feel his skin blistering and bubbling with it, white-hot, and he can't help but whimper, hates himself but, God, it hurts. He forces his eyes open and for a moment thinks, yep, he really _has_ gone crazy, because his arm is unmarked – then again, can't be damaging Michael's prom dress. Maybe it's another illusion, just some mind-over-matter psychic pain crap, but it feels real, dammit.

"I'm sorry, what was that you said? _Yes_?"

_Sorry, Zach, you're about four days too late for that._

Suddenly, he's laughing uncontrollably, some kind of hysterical reaction maybe, because this is too damn funny. Four days ago he would've been falling all over himself to sign his ass up for the angels' game plan, but right now? He's sleep-deprived and he's aching all over and he needs a fucking burger already, and he's feeling pretty damn contrary. And really, Sam or John or ( _Cas_ ) anyone else who knows him could've told 'em: Dean Winchester is one stubborn motherfucker even when he's _not_ mad as hell.

"Laugh it up, boy, I'll have you singing a different tune –"

"Really? How about this?" He bats his eyelashes and reaches out for childhood memories, for what was guaranteed to have his father _and_ his brother climbing the walls, and sings: " _I know a song that'll get on your nerves –"_

Zachariah hits him, right in the cracked ribs, buckling his knees with the pain. He's gasping, moaning for breath, eyes burning with tears, and he doesn't care, too busy struggling for air and praying he hasn't punctured a lung –

" _Let him go."_

The steel-breaking grip on his right wrist relents, and even doubled over with pain, the air thick with Hell-stench, Dean's heart leaps.

He'd know that rumble anywhere, and right now it's dark, dark with ageless fury. Cas was ( _killing angels_ ) a warrior back when humans were still in caves, and Dean has always known this but that voice makes him _believe_ it. Damn, Zachariah should've stayed in the office today.

By the time he drags himself to his feet, retrieving his gun as he goes, the two angels are circling one another, each holding one of those long silver angel-killing blades. Zachariah looks awkward as all hell, a corporate asshole thrown into a down'n'dirty brawl, and normally Dean's money would be on Cas no questions asked. When it comes down to a knife fight, all that slow-preschooler stuff goes out the window and the kid is fucking poetry in motion.

But now – Cas is covered in blood, and oh, he's sure some of it is from the angels Cas must have had to get through to reach Dean, but some of it's not. He's breathing hard, or at least looks like he is, and his eyes are blazing, electrifying, but when Zachariah lunges and they're off, Cas's movements are laboured in a way Dean's never seen before. As if he just ran a marathon, as if he's beholden to silly human notions like _tiredness_ and _limitations_. Cas needs _help_ , and all the poor bastard has is Dean.

He's never been so acutely aware of being human, of being impossibly fragile and weak, and yeah, his whole life has been nothing but going toe-to-toe with things punching way above his weight, but angels? Freaking angels? He's got nothing.

Then one of Zachariah's stabs gets perilously close, nicking Cas's cheek, and for a split second he's convinced he's gonna lose Cas – and no. No. He refuses.

Adrenaline spikes through him, and he moves on pure insensate instinct. The muscle-memory of a thousand and one hunts and stand-offs and training sessions cocks the pistol, brings his arm up, and unloads the entire clip into Zachariah's back. Bellowing, of all the things, "Yipee-ki-yay, motherfucker!"

The bullets don't do a thing to hurt Zachariah – but something in the combination of the wild scream and the seven rounds distracts him. For a split second, his head whips around in Dean's direction.

It's a long enough opening for Cas to throw his blade. Straight to the heart.

Dean watches Zachariah's face go slack, giddy and grinning as the false Hell around them shimmers out of existence. Then it's just him and Cas, bloodied and drained, staring at one another over a dead body in a dark Salt Lake City parking lot.

Cas's shoulders are bowed, there's blood crusting his lips and nostrils, dark shadows under his eyes, and all in all he looks like he might pass out at any moment. Dean darts over to support him, run his hands over that damn trenchcoat in a reflexive check for injuries, but he just grabs at Dean's collar. "Dean. Are you hurt?"

"What, me? No, no, I'm fine, dude, it's you I'm –"

"I am ... weakened, but not gravely."

Thank fuck, they're about due some good news. "Can you do your shazam thing? Cuz I'm thinking we should make a move, y'know, dead body and all."

Cas hesitates, gaze flicking away like he's ashamed of getting hurt, being weak. As if he hasn't seen Dean in a worse state on a regular basis. Idjit, as Bobby would say. "I don't think so. Are you able to drive? Your hand –"

And damned if Cas doesn't take Dean's left hand in both of his and – well – _cradle_ it. His knuckles are already swelling, he probably broke them on Zachariah's smug face, and he's kinda aware they're throbbing, but it's a little more difficult than it should be to focus on that at this particular moment.

Those wretched doe eyes are back on him, heavy-lidded and dark with concern, waiting for an answer. "Uh," Dean says, and then feels himself blush like he's a thirteen-year-old girl, for Christ's sake. "I'll be fine, Cas," he says, clears his throat, pulls his hand away, smiles and rubs at the back of his neck, pretending he definitely didn't have any kind of a reaction to that, no sir, nothing to see here.

Truth be known, he's dead beat. Now the adrenaline's wearing off, his ribs hurt worse than ever, and just to cap it all off, his wrist is starting to ache like a bitch, bruises rising in a violet echo of Zachariah's grip. Normally he loves driving – the open road, the reassuring purr and rattle of his baby, as close to meditation as he's ever gotten – but right now? Not looking forward to it.

Then again, ain't like he's got a lot of options. Should still be some amphetamines left, that'll buy him another couple hours before the whole sleep thing rears its ugly head again.

Cas retrieves his angel sword, takes Zachariah's as well, and they get into the Impala, both moving slow and too-careful ( _if anything catches up with them they are dead meat_ ). Today's been an utter loss, and Dean knows it, but when Cas settles into the seat beside him, and gives him his barely-there little smile, he's struck by the thought that, hey, could have ended a lot worse. Between the two of them, they damn well ganked _Zachariah_. That's gotta get chalked down as a win.

Before he can talk himself out of it, he reaches out to ruffle Cas's crazy hair as he guns the ignition. "You and me, man. You and me against the world."

* * *

It takes weeks for the imprint of Zachariah's fingers to disappear from Dean's wrist. The bruises go through a series of glorious Technicolor incarnations, from forbidding blue-and-purple, to a deep red that almost matches the print on his shoulder, and then to sickly yellow-green, before finally vanishing.

By that point, the looks the motel owners are giving Dean and Cas have almost gotten amusing. In Montana, there's one woman who, when Dean staggers outside in the middle of the night to get himself a Red Bull, insists on giving him some kind of pep talk about Having Options, and If He Needs A Place To Stay. It's kind of hilarious, but in fairness, he did rock up at her motel with an only half-healed slice down his face, an obvious handprint on his wrist, some quite spectacular shadows under his eyes, and Cas – well. Cas silently trailing after him like an over-protective shadow with no sense of personal space, glaring at anyone who gets too close to Dean. Gotta look a little weird.

Not that the freaked-out sideways looks matter. For one thing, it's not like it was a decade or so ago, when second glances and shiners meant serious trouble for Dad. For another, the jobs are coming so thick and fast these days, Dean's either too worn out or adrenaline-high to give a damn, and they're bouncing from small town to small town, state to state, so quickly almost no one gets an opportunity to make a thing of it.

After the disaster that was Salt Lake City, they head straight back to Bobby's to switch out the plates on the Impala. The angels have clearly sorted out some way of tracking them on the ground, and even if ( _Cas_ ) they dealt with it this time, no point shooting for a re-match. They leave Zachariah's knife with him, too, for Jo to pick up next time the Harvelles roll through. Cas attempts to talk Dean into taking it, but guns are more his thing, really, Sam was always ( _until Hell_ ) better with blades. Jo's as good as Sam ever was, nearly as good as Cas, she'll appreciate it more.

Of course, Bobby tries again to convince them to stay in Sioux Falls, but there's that impossible-to-ignore itch under Dean's skin. The restless need to drive, ride out through the dust and the mud, get on the highways and the back-roads, and find a job. _Hunt._

Cas understands. They don't talk about it, not in so many words, not at all, but Cas understands. They're in way over both their heads, and the bigger picture is so FUBAR it's enough to send you stark staring crazy, and they just need to _win_ for once. The Colt's still lost without trace, God is still doing his deadbeat dad thing, and exorcising a couple demons here and there ain't gonna stop ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer, but hey. It's the little things in life.

And so they load up on ammo and salt and holy water, get in the Impala and hit the road.

It's nothing like those six months before Detroit– it's like everything's been turned up to eleven. The demonic omens are fucking _everywhere_ , to the point that sometimes, out in the Midwest, Dean just watches the horizon and follows the dark clouds to the next job. According to Bobby, lightning storms are up something ridiculous like five hundred percent across the whole of North America ( _Dean doesn't dare ask about the rest of the world_ ).

Not just demons either – there's ghosts and vengeful spirits popping up all over the place, and what should be salt-and-burns Dean could do blindfold with one hand tied behind his back end up getting nasty. Because apparently now the things can up and _move_ , for crying out loud. There's zombies, too, and it's like ghouls and wraiths and black dogs ( _ugh_ ) are having some kind of fucking baby boom, not to mention the goddamn witches.

Case after case after case, coming one after the other at a pace like Dean's never known in his life. Even during that mad scramble to stop the Seals breaking, even after that with Cas, there used to be at least some semblance of downtime between one hunt at the next. A day or two to let the bruises fade and pulled muscles loosen up again, to catch up on missed sleep, hustle a little pool, drink a few beers, tune up the car, sit the angel down for another lesson in _Dr Sexy_ or _Star Wars_. Time to catch your breath.

Seems like breathing space is yet another casualty of Detroit. Now they only pause when Dean's picked up an injury he really can't walk off, or he hits that level of sleep deprivation where the uppers just stop working and things start moving in his peripheral vision.

The hunts are _harder_ these days, as well. There's the new-and-improved vengeful spirits crossing county lines ( _and even state borders, which is just unfair_ ) for one thing, but – well.

Back in Salt Lake City, Cas had to slice-and-dice his way through four angels plus Zachariah to save Dean's ass. And the guy's a trooper, he really is, but that took it out of him. He can't teleport everywhere these days, can't regenerate his clothes with a touch, can't get his smite on, and Dean thinks ( _isn't quite sure, doesn't know how to ask_ ) he's not quite as absurdly Man of Steel strong as he used to be. Still more than human, but less than angel. And it's sorta frightening to realise just how much he came to rely on having that immense power at his side, a ( _crutch_ ) weapon when they were hunting together before.

Only one thing to do about it, though, same as there's only one thing to do about the rest of it: keep on keepin' on.

Dean worries about Cas, he does. Hard not to, what with how he glares out the car window sometimes after there's a news bulletin on the radio ( _bad, always bad these days_ ), how he looks when they're too slow and another civilian bites the dust, or even if Dean gets another addition to his scar collection. It's shitty enough not being able to protect people, without knowing you used to be able to, but can't anymore.

Besides, getting more and more human? Whole load of crap that goes along with that, and Dean can't blame Cas for not wanting any of it. Hell, he doesn't want it for Cas either, not really. Guy deserves better.

So yeah, he gets that, but there's a small pathetic part of him that's glad. Cuz, well, maybe the angels hung around watching humans for however many millennia, but the peeping tom thing doesn't exactly prepare you for actually _doing_ human stuff. Like buying clothes, or getting dressed, or eating, or shaving, or a thousand and one other things.

It's like Cas is completely new to the world, sometimes, like a little kid, doing everything for the very first time, and Dean gets to see that. And, yeah, he teases Cas about it ( _worth it to hear Cas try to tease back_ ) but there's something in the way his face lights up, the glimpses Dean gets of a vivid smile, the flicker of curiosity or surprise or fascination in his eyes, the way he just _trusts_ Dean to guide him through it all – it's enough to keep Dean going. Keeps him from losing his shit when he's had six hours sleep in a week and there's yet another freaking demon-nest round the corner and he can't shake the knowledge they're trying to dam the Nile with a piece of cardboard.

Everything's shit, but the first time he sees Cas wearing his ancient, oil-stained Metallica tee, bare feet peeking out from under the frayed hems of his favourite pair of blue jeans, his heart does a weird little flip, and he grins so wide it hurts. They nearly have their asses handed to them by a gang of white-eyed demons, but after, driving away with a flamboyantly blacked eye and a deep ache in his back ( _bruised kidneys, pisses blood for a couple days_ ), Dean looks across at Cas, fiddling with the loose threads at the rips in those jeans, and just can't maintain his foul mood.

Dean looks like an after-school special about bullying, everything hurts, they came this close to getting slaughtered, he's got a six hour drive ahead to help the Harvelles out with a very nasty zombie infestation, but damn it. They wasted the demons in the end, he's got Cas, and if that's the best he's gonna get, hell, he'll take it.

Waging a losing war against everything ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer dragged out of the Pit becomes almost bearable, because of Cas.

Teaching him to play pool – he's unnervingly efficient at it – and poker – they could hustle like pros if they ever had time, read each other like books by now. How proud he looks when Dean lets him help clean the weapons, or fill up the Impala's gas tank, or do the laundry. The way even after months of trying to show him how, Dean still has to do up his shirt buttons for him. Hearing him cuss for the first time, which cracks Dean up every time he thinks of it for the next month. First time he laughs, hoarse and throaty, after Dean has a small misunderstanding with a can of shaving foam and it explodes all over the goddamn motel bathroom. And then again, and over and over again, as he starts to get his head around why lame puns are the best thing in the world.

Cas starts to eat after a ghoul-hunt in Idaho, three days of almost non-stop chase-and-decapitate. Between the pair of them, they practically eat the nearest diner out of house and home, and if he wasn't exhausted and starving and woozy from blood-loss, Dean would be freaking out. No more creepy teleportation, and wearing ( _Dean's_ ) normal clothes, that's one thing, but needing food – that's getting into bona fide human territory.  And that's, well, that's scary.

How the fuck do you look after an angel whose Grace is leaching away, faster every day, plunging down some slippery slope towards – hell, nobody knows. Nobody knows, even _Cas_ doesn't understand what's happening, and what the fuck is Dean meant to do?

In the end, he does the only thing he can think to do. He keeps driving, taking them to the next job, whether it's one Bobby sends them on, or one Ellen asks them to join, or one they find themselves. Feeds Cas the way he used to feed his perpetually ravening teenage brother, on extra-large pizzas and supersized burgers and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. Replaces the bloodied and torn shirts with those supermarket packs of three, choosing blue over black or green these days ( _brings out the colour of those big eyes_ ). When the weather takes a turn, buys him a heavy canvas coat ( _sews anti-demon and angel-proofing charms and protective hex pouches into the lining_ ) and a set of steel-toed boots to match his own.

Sometimes that feels like enough, sometimes it doesn't.

Around the time winter starts to bite, Dean realises that it isn't just him taking care of Cas, the deal cuts both ways and how long has _that_ been going on? It honestly scares him that he can't remember. Cas cleaning up all his wounds for him ( _even his shaving-nicks_ ), returning with the laundry and a slice of pie, giving him sad doe eyes and disappointed sighs until he lets Cas take the alcohol and Vicodin off him, nagging at him to wear gloves and an extra shirt when it snows – at some point that all became normal. The way sharing clothes and driving with one arm crooked out around Cas's shoulders became normal. Just a part of his life, don't look down, it's okay.

Some little voice in the back of his mind ( _Dad's voice_ ) keeps saying, _y'know, this ain't how most guys are. Ain't how you were with your brother. Need to get this sorted out, you're too close, ain't right._ But they aren't most guys, and Cas isn't his brother, and maybe they're wrapped heartbeat-tight around each other, and maybe when those fingers brush over broken skin his mouth goes dry, but Cas is _Cas_. An angel. Untouchable. And Dean's certainly not gonna – well.

Nothing's gonna happen, he's not that stupid. It's just that he nightmares.

It's not like he was ever the world's greatest sleeper, had bouts of insomnia and all that even before he was in high school. Used to have night terrors when he was little, but he grew out of that by about age six – Dad teaching him to shoot, that had helped, knowing he wasn't _totally_ helpless. And yeah, he had the odd night of waking up breathless with the certainty the room was burning down around him or Sammy was dead in the mud at his feet, but it wasn't anything a cold beer or a sneaky joint couldn't get rid of. Really wasn't a biggie. Nothing like Sam was after the Jess thing.

Then he went to Hell, and Cas dragged him out again, and if he's honest? He hasn't had a good night since. Not without knocking back some Jack Daniels or a couple of Valium. Not even then, sometimes. But even bright-red razor-dreams lose their edge after a while, and he'd gotten used to it. Adjusted, like he's adjusted to all the rest of the fuckery that is his life.

That went out the window after Detroit – no, after Salt Lake City. After Zachariah dropped him into some holodeck version of Hell on Earth, with his white-suited brother taking the starring role.

If anyone had told him, back in the day, that he'd miss dreaming about Alastair, Dean would have laughed himself sick. And then decked them. Turns out, Hell-dreams _can_ get worse after all ( _it can always get worse, oughta know this by now_ ).

The first time he jolted awake with the image of Sam smiling bloodily down at him etched into the backs of his eyelids, Cas was standing at his bedside. And, yeah, Cas isn't as big as Dean, let alone Sam, but he's definitely not smalleither, and he can _loom_ , and Dean has certain reflexes when he wakes up at three AM, awash with adrenaline, to someone looming over him. God knows what'd happen now – doesn't bear thinking about – but then Cas was still angel enough that the bullet Dean put in him was pretty much water off a duck's back.

Not that that made Dean feel any better about fucking well shooting his best friend. And so, after about fifty bazillion apologies, a _no-looming_ rule was agreed on, Cas started sitting on the other bed while Dean slept ( _probably still watching him like a creeper, though, but baby steps_ ) and life went on.

So, yeah, what with the whole Apocalypse Now thing, and their lives turning into a goddamn carnival of killing, it's kinda upped the ante on the dreams. Starting awake with a gasp, that's one thing, but then he starts waking up screaming, which is just mortifying. After a while Cas starts shaking him awake before he gets to that stage ( _screaming bloody murder in the wee hours tends to get you kicked out of motels, funny that_ ), and can do that even without peeking in his dreams because apparently now Dean talks in his sleep.

Guilty as Dean feels about that – making his angel listen to whatever he says when he's dreaming about lying on the rack with Sam carving him up, or carving _Sam_ up, or standing over a rack as Sam directs his hands like Alastair used to – he's also pathetically grateful. Cas's hand on his shoulder, skating down his arm, over his back, it's soothing. When he comes back to the world after nightmaring, with all that rancid fear nestled under his skin, he needs the contact.

Even if he can't ever ask for it, he needs that touch, grounding him. Like when he was five, waking up alone and creeping over to pick up the baby, holding him until he could pretend they were safe again. Or after Hell, when he'd sit on the edge of his bed, reaching out to press his hand to the crown of Sam's head, feeling his warmth, listening to him breathe, reminding himself that Sam's alive, that's why he went downstairs, and it's okay.

Cas, bless him, doesn't complain, doesn't ask him to talk about it, doesn't try and push him away. Just sits there, hand on his back, or kneading gently at his neck, till he's calmed down enough to either get some more sleep, or get up and get shit done.

And so it goes.

Spring comes, and then summer and fall, and the jobs are getting worse. Messier. Big civilian death tolls. They don't make the news but only because the news these days is wall-to-wall natural disasters, and flu pandemics, and the Middle East burning, and oh yeah, the world economy is tanking on top of all that. End-is-nigh street preachers are doing a roaring trade these days, and so are the Internet conspiracy theorists, with all the shaky mobile-phone footage the networks won't show ( _he always stops the videos at the glimpses of a man all in white)_. With all that going down? Hellhounds ( _sorry, rabid dogs)_ ripping children to shreds in Maine don't exactly make the grade anymore.

After _that_ particular hunt, Cas shakes Dean out of a nightmare in the dead hours of the morning, and to his undying shame, he bursts into tears and spends the next hour crying with his face pressed against Cas's shoulder. Cas has one hand on his nape, the other heavy at the small of his back, and he keeps murmuring _you're safe, Dean_ , soft and dark. He smells different than he used to – there's still that strange angel-scent, sharp and sweet and something like old books, but it's overlaid with something more human now, and a little of Dean. From sharing clothes, he guesses, and wonders if he smells a bit like Castiel, too.

As fall starts turning into winter, Cas starts sleeping. He does it in the car, mostly, nodding off for a few hours while Dean drives, says there's something about the purring of the engine he finds relaxing. After a few weeks, he's built up a pretty regular pattern, God knows how with Dean's erratic _only-when-I'm-about-to-pass-out_ approach as an example. It's a relief, Dean's gotta admit, because the sporadic way Cas eats worries him enough: he'll go days insisting he isn't hungry, turning his nose up at anything Dean tries to put in front of him, then suddenly decides he wants food and puts away enough to feed a freaking army. Must still be something not-human in his metabolism, thank fuck, because as far as Dean can tell, the idiot hasn't lost any weight.

Anyway, once Cas discovers sleep, they end up sharing a bed whenever Dean needs to get his three or four hours in before he collapses. There's no real discussion about it – doesn't seem to even occur to Cas to use a separate bed, and Dean's not gonna argue about it ( _likes the closeness, doesn't examine why_ ). Sometimes he wonders just how much Cas understands about humans, and proximity, and _relationships_ and all that shit – but he's too much of a coward to risk asking, and having to explain, and then having to somehow drag his ass back to normality.

He doesn't rock the boat, and they eventually figure out how best to fit two six-foot-plus men in a narrow motel single. He goes to sleep with his head in Cas's lap, Cas propped up against the headboard ( _finds it easier to sleep sitting up, the freak_ ), and it's a little alarming how _un-_ alarming he finds the whole set-up. Cas breathes like a regular person these days, which is good, because that would _really_ weird him out, that utter silence.

It's not weird, though. In fact, it's a hell of a lot nicer than he'd ever, _ever_ admit out loud. Even helps the nightmares, some.

* * *

In January 2012, in Iowa, they run into the Croatoan virus for the first time. Well, second time for Dean.

They've stopped in some Podunk not-even-a-town for gas, Cas asleep, head leaning against the window. It's a ways yet to the town they're headed for – demons _and_ a black dog, double the fun – and he's not expecting trouble, has his guard down. Rookie error, such a fucking rookie error, he oughta know by now, nowhere you can go that'll let you drop your guard. Not when you're a hunter, certainly not when the motherfucking Apocalypse is nigh.

When the gas station attendant comes after him with a freaking kitchen knife, it's only drilled-in reflexes and paranoia ( _gun at the small of his back, naked without it_ ) that save him. Cas is awake and out of the car, twirling that oversized angel-blade and snarling, "Dean, what happened?" by the time the body hits the ground.

"Not a fucking clue," Dean barks out ( _lies_ ). He shifts sideways, scanning the empty street, instinctively keeping Cas at his back. Something more's coming, he knows it, it's the way these things always go. Never rains but it pours. Then, sure enough, like the gunshot summoned them, five people come tearing round the corner towards them, baseball bats and knives and a rifle in hand, faces contorted with impossible rage.

He doesn't even hesitate. Neither of them do. Five on two doesn't come close to the worst odds they've faced, and they're both way too well-practiced at this.

Dean takes out the guy with the rifle first, single perfect kill-shot between the eyes, hits the teenage boy carrying a knife twice, in the chest, then another one-shot-wonder for the woman wielding a baseball bat. By that point Cas has ganked the other two – hurling first the angel-knife and then one of the regular throwing-knives Jo gave him into their throats. No human Dean's ever known could make those shots, not at this distance, and that's the only reason he puts up with Cas's preference for blades. Almost as efficient as a gun, for him.

Cas heads over to inspect the bodies and retrieve his weapons, and Dean covers him. Gaze raking back-and-forth restlessly, nerves alight with that early-hunt adrenaline. "They zombies, Cas?"

"No." He sounds puzzled, irritated by his own confusion. "They are – I don't know what they are. They appear wholly human." If Dean turned around, he'd see Cas squinting at the corpses, lips pressed tight with frustration. Kid used to be all-knowing, doesn't take too well to uncertainty.

"Huh. Cursed, maybe? We got witches, is that what we got here?" It's not gonna be, there's a sick familiarity ( _River Grove, Oregon, the one that got away_ ) creeping over him, but a man can hope. Sad as shit when you're actually _hoping_ for witches, but hell, he's been having a bad couple years.

Cas stands up, and Dean can tell he's mirroring Dean, weapon at the ready, eyes peeled for danger. You spend long enough hunting with someone, gets to be like telepathy between you, and Dean always was hyper-aware of Cas anyway. Hard not to be, that crushing angel-presence he used to have. "I could not see any traces of magic."

Well, that's just great. "You sure you'd see?"

He kinda hates to ask, but he has to. That angel-vision of Cas's is mighty handy, but what with the whole eating-sleeping-no-more-teleporting thing, can't take these things for granted anymore. "I'd see," Cas says, sour but certain. "It's not a curse."

There's a blood-curdling scream – high and hysterical, a child's voice – from somewhere off to Dean's left, hidden by a row of silent houses. As one, they turn towards the noise, and it cuts off into a long wet rattle. Can't be sure, of course, but Dean's been hunting long enough to know how it sounds when someone ( _a kid_ ) dies with their throat cut.

He passes his free hand down over his face, swallows. Looks round at Cas, eyes dark with focus, lips tense and down-turned, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Tells him, "Go get your gun and the ammo. Couple t-shirts too, we're gonna want to cover our mouths. I know what this is."

* * *

Dean's used to the violence of hunts – has been since he was a teenager. The push and pull, swing and shoot, the blood and guts and pain. In the moment, it doesn't bother him, because in the midst of a hunt, it's like he's not really there at all. He just gets swept away on adrenaline and pure instinct, acting on reflex and muscle memory with hardly any conscious thought. Can't even remember the details, after.

But yeah, he's used to violence. Used to cleaning up the aftermath, to everything from fistfights over pool to improvising flamethrowers to take down a wendigo; hell, you come right down to it, he's used to _killing._ Done it with bullets, blades, fire, his bare hands, words chanted in Latin or Enochian. He's killed over and over again, and he's mostly fine with it because you do what you gotta do, greater good and all that.

Hey, when you think about some of these monsters – ghouls, wraiths, vamps – that prey on humans, it's kinda like that whole _circle of life_ thing. Natural order. They hunt people, he hunts _them_ , may the best man win.

Redruth, Iowa, isn't a hunt. It's a massacre.

It takes them just over twenty-six hours. They use almost all the ammunition stowed in the Impala's trunk, some they pick up in the town, and a few home-made explosives. By the time it's over, there are, as far as they can tell, no survivors. Everyone's either been ripped to shreds by the Croats or infected and shot.

After a couple of hours, Dean starts calling the infected _Croats_. The name helps stick them in the _monsters_ box in his mind, makes them easier to gun down.

By the end, it's _too_ easy. He doesn't feel anything when he shoots them. Not even when he's dropping infected kids. Not even the rush of satisfied relief that usually accompanies ganking something. Just – nothing. Could be shooting at cardboard cut-outs, for all he cares.

When it's over, they change out of the blood-stained clothes, get back in the car, drive on. Neither of them says anything. Dean can't begin to think what he might say to Cas. What is there to say? _It happened, we dealt with it, now let's move on and never mention it again._

They stop for the night at a motel just past the Iowa state line. Even though he slept for a good five and a half hours the previous night, Dean's as tired as he can ever remember being. Exhausted right down to the marrow of his bones. From the shadows under Cas's vacant, glazed-over eyes, he's guessing he feels the same.

There's some jobs that just – don't do to remember. Just sit in the back of your mind, coil up at the base of your spine, and lurk there, poisoning everything.

Some jobs that would turn you into a monster yourself, if you let them.

So, nah, no talking. Best that they just take a few hours off, have a drink or two ( _or seven or eight_ ), sleep a bit, then get up and get back on the horse. Gank some more demons, chase down some more leads on the Colt, swing by Bobby's, same old same old, and at some point Cas will start in with his little barely-there smile again, asking Dean to help him tie his boots and bitching at him when he drinks and pretending not to understand sarcasm. And everything will be okay again. At least for a while.

Getting into bed that night is the usual awkwardly not-awkward dance, compounded by all the vague aches that accompany the aftermath of a strenuous hunt. They normally talk a little before Dean gets the light – about nothing, the familiar nothings that fill in the gaps when you're with someone twenty-four-seven – but not this time.

Cas looks as miserable as Dean's ever seen him. Whether he's gotten more expressive, or Dean's just better at reading the angel's little twitches and slouches, it's written all over his face, plain as day. And he wishes there was some way he could take it away, because Cas deserves better than ( _Dean_ ) the heartsick guilt that's bowing his shoulders like that. Deserves better than this whole fucking mess of a planet he's landed on.

But today, between them they slaughtered a couple hundred people, and the Apocalypse is heading toward them like an onrushing train and ( _it's his fault_ ) that's just how it is. Nothing he can say is gonna take that away, or make it any better, and he's too tired to try.

Dean ruffles Cas's shower-damp hair, summons up a smile from somewhere. Gets a very, very slight twitch of the lips in return, but, hell, given the circumstances, he'll take that. He turns out the light, settles his head in the cradle of Cas's crossed legs, closes his eyes, waits for oblivion to take him.

It doesn't. That'd be asking too damn much.

The nightmares are the worst they've been since he was a little kid, watching his family burn down around him. He walks through Hell, and it's full of children with throats torn open, bloodshot eyes, half their skulls missing where he blew their brains out at point blank range. And, of course, his brother, eyes gleaming yellow-gold, razor held delicately in red-dripping hands, smiling smug and gentle, stroking Dean's face. Telling him _I'm proud, so proud, my sweet_ , Alastair's words rolling off Sam's tongue like honey.

He comes to sitting bolt upright, slick with cold sweat, shaking like a leaf, heart tripping in his chest, expecting to see nothing but the blood and blasted houses, to hear the screams and feel the kiss of the razor. The dream-impression is so strong that for a moment he _sees_ it, it's _real_ , and there's a scream bubbling up through his tight-locked throat –

"Dean. _Dean_." Cas's voice, painfully raw, curling into his ear. Cas's hand, heavy and calloused and hot, resting on his left shoulder, fitted to the scar, the mark he seared into Dean when he broke through Hell's defences and seized his soul.

"Dean, I've got you," Cas says, voice all jagged and strained with worry.

His chin is hovering next to Dean's other shoulder, his legs kicked out to either side. Their bodies are close, so close Dean can feel the heat radiating off his angel, but the only point of contact is that hand pressed to his shoulder. An anchor.

Cas is here, they're in some motel in Nebraska, and yesterday they waded through blood but for now, for now –

Then Cas's other hand brushes down his spine, stroking gently at the small of his back, and suddenly he's just – that contact. That touch, just hands on him that aren't violent, aren't hurting, that soft touch that's safety and grounding and – he just _needs_.

It's accidental. Nothing planned, nothing he's even let himself think about ( _not in the sober light of day, at least_ ). Takes him a moment to even really understand what's happening, but –

He turns around and there's Cas's stupid pretty face, eyes wide and deep, shining at him through the gloom. Then he moves and he's got a hand in soft dark hair and another gripping a stubble-rough jaw, and there are lips on his and arms around him. And after a moment, Cas is kissing back, all heat and hunger, fingers digging into his shoulder, and Dean feels fevered, lost. Thinks he might wake up at any moment.

But no – no, this is real. It's really Cas he's pressed against, their legs a hopeless tangle with the sheets, Cas running his hands down Dean's back, Cas letting him grip the curve of his hip. Wretched angel can't do up his own buttons or reliably fold a goddamn map, but he's one hell of a good kisser, go fucking _figure_.

It doesn't get that far. Dean's not a complete dog. Besides, after a while ( _could have been hours, lost track of time a little_ ) they come up for air, and look at each other, and kind of collapse. At least it's a mutual collapse, so Dean can totally blame Cas for the fact they just sit there, draped over and around one another, half-asleep again, until it starts getting light.

* * *

Later, in the Impala, ( _heading for that demons-and-a-black-dog hunt they were on the way to before the thing they're not talking about happened_ ) Dean clears his throat and says, "Um. So. I'm sorry. About earlier. Jumped on you a little. I'm sorry."

He says it as they're coming up on an interchange, so he's got an ironclad excuse to keep his eyes on the road and not look at Cas. Pretty sure he's blushing as it is. Damn pale skin, he'd be freaking beetroot if he had to _look_ at the guy.

There's a long pause – feels like years – while he grips the steering wheel tight enough it hurts, watches the traffic with manic intensity. Then Cas says, slow and careful, "It's okay. I don't mind."

Oh, fuck, he _has_ to look now.

Cas is studying the fraying cuff of the shirt he's wearing. His expression is blank – most of his expressions are pretty blank – but he's not doing his confused-tortured squint, or drawing his eyebrows in, the way he does when he's pissed. He skates his tongue over his lips, and that should _not_ make Dean react like that, damn it all.

"You don't mind?" Probably sounds like an idiot, but he needs a little clarification at this point. _C'mon, Cas, gimme a clue here, man._

"No." Cas looks up at him, and his eyes are bright, and his mouth is quirking. "Not at all."

"Okay." Dean looks back at the road, knows for a fact he's lobster-red and smiling like a goofy teenager, can't help it. "Okay."

* * *

It's not the last time that happens, in the post-hunt high of triumph and fuck-me-we-survived, in the quiet 4 AM dark of motel rooms and the Impala parked out on country back-roads.

It's not the last time they come across the Croatoan virus, either.

Not by a long shot.


	4. Croatoan Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It kinda hits Dean out of the blue, the realisation that they're all going to die today.

_'Ain't found a way to kill me yet …'_

* * *

It kinda hits Dean out of the blue, the realisation that they're all going to die today.

It's not like the overall notion is anything new – he's read enough papers and watched enough CNN and gotten enough bulletins from Bobby over the last three years, last few months, he's well aware they're all doomed, thank you. But that's kind of an abstract idea, even after seeing the footage ( _all those fucking people)_ from the East Coast. Knowing you're about to bite it, right here, right now, well, that's a little different.

But here he is, crouching behind the abandoned cars they're using as a makeshift barricade, a wild-eyed teenager shivering at his right, Castiel tense and silent at his left, Jo behind him wrapping up her mother's broken hand, and he's going to die. Him, and Theo, and Cas, and Ellen, and Jo. And when they get torn to pieces, the demons will march the Croats through the rest of the city, and they'll just be five more corpses lining the city streets.

The sun's high and hot overhead. Dean can feel the nape of his neck slowly burning and he can't breathe for the bandana covering his nose and mouth, slicked to his skin with fear-sweat and the ridiculous humidity. Just his luck to be making his last stand in Atlanta in May, he _knew_ this was a terrible idea – hunting in cities always gets fucking messy, and he'd rather die out in the Kansas plains or on the open road– but hey. It was always gonna be a kamikaze run, this job. Never thought it'd be anything else.

They'd all known that, going in. Ellen got the tip-off from some psychic, _Atlanta's next_ , and the four of them sat on the hoods of their respective cars, middle of nowhere in Appalachia, watching the pile of salted Croat bodies burn, considering. And finally, because clearly no one else was gonna step up to the plate, and what other option did they have, Dean had said, _we're gonna do this thing, ain't we?_ And they'd packed up and headed down to Georgia, and it was plain as day, there to see in everyone's eyes. Heading straight for a suicide mission, all of them.

There's some things, though, you just can't let go. Can't just stand back and let happen, not without at least _trying_ , not and still call yourself a hunter, anyways. Losing Atlanta would be another half-million people, plus fuck knows how many more who'd ended up there after high-tailing it out of the meat-grinder that is the East Coast. Half a million, dead or infected ( _same thing in the end_ ), and the Croats pushing ever West.

New York, DC, Philly, Boston, Jersey, that had all taken them by surprise – just how overwhelmingly fast and hard ( _Sam's_ ) Lucifer's forces hit. But this time – this time, they knew, and even pragmatic, careful Cas didn't suggest anything else.

And so here Dean is, leaning against a shot-out car, death-smell of sweat and blood and shit heavy in the air, and he goes to reload his faithful pearl-handled Colt, and realises he's down to his last clip, and this is it.

They'd had three duffle bags when Dean and Jo found the kid, huddled at the base of a stairwell cradling what he said was his dad's gun, but that was five hours, a few explosions and a shitload of bullets ago. Now they're down to just the one, and near enough the bottom of that. They're at a momentary lull, no more packs of demon-driven Croats running them down, but that's not gonna last.

Aw, hell.

He doesn't panic – doesn't do any good, and his Dad taught him better than that. There's a time and a place, and a battle ain't it. Besides, there's the kid to consider.

He passes a hand over his forehead, flicking away beads of sweat, says, calm as he can, "Folks, we are almost out of ammo."

There's a heartfelt _fuck_ from Ellen, and Cas glances across at him, brows drawn tight and eyes dark, not surprised or even afraid, not really, because Cas has always understood what is they've been going up against, these last three years. And Dean could thank God ( _ha_ ) for that stubborn resigned strength – and then beside him he _feels_ the tremors as Theo's ragged breathing kicks over into full-on hyperventilation again.

Dean moves on instinct, pulls away from the car to crouch in front of the kid – whistles down-up for Jo, who hefts her gun and slides forward to take his place – grabs at his shoulders, shakes him. "Like I told you, in for three, out for three, c'mon, man. In, two, three, out, two, three, slow it right down." And where would he be without Dad's old training, words slipping out easy. It's how he's comforted countless freaked-out witnesses ( _his high-strung teenage brother_ ), it's his own after-nightmare ritual, it's muscle memory by now. He keeps his grip on Theo as the kid's frantic gasps gradually even out again. "You with me?"

Finally the boy opens his eyes, pants out, "Yeah, yeah, I'm alright. I'm good."

He's lying. Obviously lying. His face has gone as ashen as his mahogany skin will allow, and he's still shaking like a leaf – and hell, the kid's doing spectacular for a sixteen-year-old who saw his sister tear their mom's guts out this morning, been holding it together like a hunter, like a pro, but Dean knows panic when he sees it. Knows he isn't gonna be able to drag Theo back off of this ledge. Not now.

He hears footsteps from beyond the barricade – the uncoordinated rapid smack of charging Croats – and then there's five quick gunshots as Cas and Jo gank them. The kid flinches, ducking his head, and Dean digs his fingers in harder, trying to ground him as the thick wetness of death-rattles fills the air. Problem with Croats is, they die loud, and there isn't the ammo to spare for mercy-kills, and it's not doing wonders for the way Theo's trembling.

Boy's a fine shot with that gun of his, wasted a fair few Croats of his own today, but right now, with that hysteria running through him? He's the last person they need with a finger on a trigger.

Dean looks over to Ellen, chalky white and cradling her right hand, half-crushed when the last big wave of Croats almost shoved their barricade over onto them. She meets his gaze the way she always does, straight-on, eyebrows raised, _let's hear it then, kid_ , and fuck, he doesn't want her to die. Not that he wants any of them to die, but Ellen is – mothers shouldn't die. They just _shouldn't_. The idea hits him then.

"Theo, you can drive, right?"

The kid looks up, frowning. "Well, _yeah_ ," he says, like it should be obvious, and if he's back to being all snarky and teenage-like, well, better that than freaking the fuck out.

"Awesome." Dean digs in the pocket of his jeans, pulls out his keys. For a moment he hesitates, because he doesn't even let Cas drive his car ( _his home, his good-luck charm, his baby)_ , not unless he's out cold or bleeding to death or something. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that. He tosses the keys, and Theo catches them on reflex.

"You two," he says, looking from Ellen to Theo and back, trying to pull on that calm-competent-commanding voice his Dad always used when they were hunting, the one that could make even Sam at his most contrarian shut up and hop to it. "You two are gonna make a break for it, go get the Impala. The Army's gotta be around somewhere, or the National Guard, something. Try and find them, send them back our way, but you get out and stay out, you hear?"

"The hell I will." Ellen doesn't miss a beat, and she might not be yelling but she's spitting mad. Staring daggers at him, chin up and same look she had in her eyes after ( _Sam died_ ) the Roadhouse burnt, after she shut the Devil's Gate. "If you think I'm leaving you kids here to die, Dean Winchester –"

Cas interrupts, "If we have reinforcements, we may be able to hold here, or run the demons down. If not, we die. All of us." He hasn't spoken in what feels like forever, sunk deep into some meditative battle-calmness, and his voice is all darkness and certainty. Times like these, Dean remembers that before he was _Cas_ , Castiel was a soldier, and his tour of duty lasted millennia.

"He's right." Jo twists around to look at her mother, so it's just Cas watching the road for more Croat attacks. "You can't shoot with that hand, and this is our only chance, Mom. Please."

He can seethe moment Ellen gives in, sees the cold hard knowledge of just how well-fucked they all are sink in, past the barrier of _I won't fucking_ let _this happen._ Been there a few times himself. "God forgive me," she mutters ( _should be God asking_ her _forgiveness_ ), and nods. Pulling the scarf down from her mouth, she shifts forward to kiss Jo's forehead, Cas's cheek. Touches Dean's face, just for a moment, smiling all ( _motherly_ ) soft, and he has to turn away, because he can't deal with that, not right now.

To Theo he says, "You wreck my baby, you'll wish I let the Croats eat you." Can't help but grin when the kid calls him an old man and gives him the finger, smacks him on the shoulder as he gets up and Dean takes up position against the overturned car again. Clicks off the safety, sights down the barrel, down toward the end of the street, the warehouse where the demons are holed up, sending wave after wave of virus-maddened cannon fodder at them.

No one says goodbye. The sun is beating down on them, hot as Hell ever was, and even on their side of the barricade the bodies are piled high, and there's nothing left for anyone to say.

The Impala is parked around the corner ( _the Harvelles' truck written off in a Croat ambush_ ), and Ellen and Theo take off for it at an almost-run. Neither of them looks back.

"I hope they make it," Cas says, quiet.

Dean can hear what he really means – _ten to one, we die here before the cavalry arrives, but_ they _don't have to_ – and when he looks at Jo, open bright face drawn tight into a mask, he knows she hears it too. She meets his eyes, nods once, and that right there could stand for entire conversations. He presses his shoulder against Cas's, feels Cas press back, ever-so-slightly, but enough.

"Yeah, me too," he says.

Jo coiled tight and ready on his right, Cas an anchor at his left. Thirty bullets left between them. There's some things you just can't let go of, even if it's a kamikaze run, and Dean never did learn how to let go.

* * *

They're down to ten bullets, maybe enough gasoline for one more Molotov, and then it's just knives. Dean's got a machete stashed in the duffle bag, Cas his angel-blade, and Jo its twin, prised from the fingers of Zachariah's lifeless vessel what seems like a lifetime ago.

Ten bullets, a Molotov cocktail, a machete and two angelic knives. The sun's still beating down, relentless, and Dean's tongue is impossibly thick and heavy in his mouth, thinks he'd kill for Cas to bring him ice. His spine is a long line of tension, right shoulder hollowed out and numb with recoil and the memory of one too many dislocations. The cut on his side where a demon got him this morning is salted with sweat and stinging like a bitch.

They started the day out high on adrenaline and recklessness, counting their kills in competition with each other because it made Jo grin, kept the horror ( _people, they were all just people before, so many of them_ ) at bay. Now Jo's sunken-eyed and grim, and they're rationing out the water a sip at a time, and Dean has a few pills left, but there's a kind of bone-deep warzone fatigue even amphetamines can't touch.

There's that mad dash of Croat footsteps again, and this time it's six of the bastards running at them, ragged and bloodstained, one of them a girl who can't be more than twelve, in pigtails even. She's in the centre, and so she's Dean's – gets her square between the eyes ( _perfect execution shot, even Dad couldn't fault it_ ), because give that little lady half a chance, she'd rip their guts out. Another bullet for the middle-aged dude next to her, and Jo and Cas have taken the others out. One of them looks like Cas only hit her in the stomach, and it's a lethal shot alright, but that's a damn slow way to go. No bullets to spare. They're gonna have to listen to her screaming for ten minutes straight.

Goddamn Croats. He hates things that won't die quiet like good little monsters.

"Four bullets left," Dean says, and Cas comes back with, "Thank you, Mr. Holmes," and really, he only has himself to blame for teaching the idjit to snark in the face of danger.

Four bullets left, and he's starting to think about that. It ain't exactly an appealing thought _(not like it was those two days before he went down to the crossroads, for awhile after Hell_ ) but he'd rather that than get torn to shreds again. Been there, done that, wasn't fun the first time, doesn't fancy a second round.

He's trying to think of some way to bring it up that doesn't sound awful, like he's cracked up once and for all, when they hear the roar of an engine from behind them. The noise seems to come out of nowhere, out of the oppressive Croatoan quietness, and then it swallows them whole, and Dean's gesturing Cas to keep watch over the barricade while he and Jo turn to face what he doesn't dare to hope will be help.

The two camouflage-painted armoured cars come out of the heat haze like a mirage, and if it weren't for the dents and scratches and rust-red stains all over them, that's what Dean would take them for. But they aren't, they're real, and Jo's gripping his arm so tight it hurts.

The cars come growling to a halt. Three men tumble out, wearing surgical masks and clutching assault rifles like comfort blankets, and then there's an awkward little dance as no-one wants to get into close range ( _when they've just got the virus, those mothers turn on a dime_ ). Eventually Dean loses patience, ( _nothing ever gets done unless you do it yourself_ ) puts his gun down and walks over to let them flash a light in his eyes, checking for virus-blasted blood vessels. And of course they don't know to douse him in holy water and look at him then, because that'd be too easy.

Once they've pronounced him clear, everyone calms down a little, tugging masks and scarves down to talk like civilised people ( _and breathe while they're at it_ ). They go to look at Jo's eyes, then Cas, and an older man gets out of the other car, heads over. There are officers' stripes on his shoulders, and Dean's gaze catches on the Marine Corps logo, and damned if that isn't the first stroke of luck they've gotten all day. If even half of what Dad used to say ( _rhapsodise)_ about the Marines was true, they couldn't hope for better allies right now. Even if they don't know shit about demons.

"Harvelle, Winchester?" the man asks, looking from Jo to Dean. "I'm Sergeant O'Neill. Your momma gave us a heads up, sent us your way."

That punches a relieved sigh out of Jo, and he squeezes her shoulder as she breathes, "Oh, thank God she's alright. Fuck."

He doesn't let himself think about the way O'Neill addressed that _your momma_ not just to Jo, but to both of them. Just steps forward to shake the Sergeant's proffered hand. "Glad to hear it, sir. Me and Jo, my partner Cas over there, they've had us pinned down for a while now. We've been dug in here, trying to hold 'em back – far as we can tell, they haven't made it into the west half of the city, that so?"

O'Neill blinks, hesitates for a moment, a little taken aback. Then he recovers, says smoothly, "That's right. We've been keeping the – the infected at bay, holding the line, but we're taking heavy casualties." Another brief hesitation, giving Dean an appraising look, then he seems to come to a decision. "Tell the truth, we could do with some extra hands. You serve?"

It's a question he's been asked more than a few times over the years, and it always makes him grin on the inside, knowing Dad's training sank in that well, that he's good enough ( _man enough_ ) for men like this to recognise it in him. See him as one of them.

"No, sir, but my Dad was in the Corps, practically raised me on _semper fi_ and all that. Me and Cas, and Jo, we can handle ourselves in a fight." He pauses, then figures, may as well come out with it. It isn't even the biggest truth-bomb they're gonna have to lay on the guy: not like they can keep the whole _demons_ thing quiet, not anymore. That horse has definitely bolted. "Ain't the first time we've seen the Croatoan virus, either."

"Yeah? Huh." The Sergeant rocks back on his heels a little at that, gives him the kind of look Dean associates with credit cards going bad and getting called on fake IDs. Figures the man's turning that over in his mind, thinking about the things he and Cas and Jo have done, _must_ have done, to see Croatoan and walk away without eyes shot crimson with blood. Things that a year ago, some saner time before ( _Sam said_ yes) the East Coast tore itself to shreds, would have bought them a one-way ticket to Death Row.

Dean sees the change cross his face as O'Neill decides he doesn't care. That if it's a cold-hearted killer he sees, well, goddamn it, it's a cold-hearted killer he needs right now.

"Well, consider yourselves drafted," he says, holds his hand out for them to shake again. If they weren't all so royally screwed, Dean'd be grinning like a kid right now. O'Neill nods toward their barricade. "That where they're all coming from, I take it?"

Cas is still propped up against the shot-out cars, keeping watch, finger ready on the trigger. Dean heads over and crouches down next to him, beckoning O'Neill to follow, so the man can get a good look at the trail of Croats they've wasted. As the Sergeant takes it in, he says, low as he can, "You alright there, Cas?"

"Yes, Dean." He looks rough, squinting against the glare of the sun, the t-shirt shielding his lower face dark with sweat, but not half as strung-out as Dean feels. It's the _waiting_ that's been doing him and Jo in, and when Cas wants to be, he's the most patient son-of-a-bitch Dean's ever met in his life.

On Cas's other side, O'Neill says, "Have they got some kind of hideout down there?"

Another Marine behind them adds in, "Sir, I thought according to the brass, they ain't supposed to be smart enough for planning and tactics and all that crap."

"There is definitely something else going on here," O'Neill agrees.

Dean is trying for some way to explain the demon Jedi-mind-trick thing without blowing their credibility out the window ( _all that was always Sam's department_ ), when Cas says, in his most absolutely, maddeningly, deadpan tone, "That would be the demons. We believe they're using mind control to expedite the Croats' takeover."

There is a moment of utter silence, and then O'Neill demands, incredulous, "Excuse me? _Demons_?"

Stupid fucking angel, how the hell does he go and forget they're dealing with civilians here? The Marines are military, sure, but they're civilians where it comes to salt lines and devils' traps. Civilians where it counts. He gets to his feet, moves round so he's facing the Sergeant, gives the man a tight little smile. "Yeah, _demons_. You know. Black-eyed, evil, haven't y'all heard the rumours in the Corps?"

These last couple years, and especially in the last six or seven months, since Croatoan started getting going, they've been running into more and more folks who've seen demons, or at least heard whispers of the things. 'Specially cops, sheriffs, state troopers, that kind of thing. Seems like, what with the Apocalypse being nigh and all, Hell decided to come out the closet.

Sure enough, O'Neill gets this kinda shifty look on his face, half suspicion, half straight-up fear. It's the look civilians get when they're still trying to cling on to the comfort of disbelief, right before something impossible pops up and tries to gank them. "Mass hysteria," he says, and Dean bursts into mirthless laughter.

Beside him, Jo snorts, "Mass hysteria? That's what they're calling it? Like they're saying Croatoan's the fucking swine flu? Oh, man."

" _Dean_. We don't have time for this," Cas grates out, and when Dean looks round at him – yeah, if he could anymore, Cas'd definitely be about to get his smite on. Holy smoke O'Neill's ass.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Dean raps his knuckles against Cas's shoulder reassuringly, turns to O'Neill, doing his best to project sane-stable-trustworthy ( _fucking joke_ ). And Jo better come through, better help him out with this, because if they can't make them see sense, the Marines are gonna be worse than useless. "Sir, just hear us out –"

"You're crazy," O'Neill says, backing away a couple steps and gesturing over his shoulder at a heavyset guy who looks to be his second-in-command, heading over looking determined. Looking like he thinks he's gonna be a hero and lay down the law, and Dean does _not_ need this shit. Today of all days he does not need this.

He shifts to get into the guy's path, holds up his hands, starts to say, "Look, man, just let us do our job, okay?"

The Marine ignores him completely, brushing past both him and Jo, unfazed by O'Neill's barked-out, _what the hell, Pike?_ In a movement so smooth and sudden Dean almost misses it, he seizes Cas by the arms, yanks him upright and _throws_ him. Throws him with enough force that when he crashes into the sidewalk, he's winded, the gun skittering out of his grasp, and maybe Cas isn't all angel anymore, but he sure as hell ain't all human either, and – _fuck_.

There's a flask of holy water at his hip, and he has the cap off and is hurling it at the Marine before he really knows what he's doing ( _thank you, killer instinct_ ). Sure enough, the thing's black-eyed and screeching now, foul-smelling gas steaming off its skin, but it's still holding its own as Cas tries to throw it off, even looks like it's getting the best of him. And Jo's there beside him, long silvery knife in hand, but she can't throw it, not without risking hitting Cas. They're moving in closer, the words of the Enochian exorcism he memorised last year are flowing off Dean's tongue as fast as he can get them out, and it's shorter than the Latin ( _saved their asses back in Ohio that one time_ ) but it's not short _enough_ , not quick enough –

The demon gets a hand around Cas's throat, leans in close, black eyes gleaming as it purrs, "When I'm done with you, angel, I'm gonna _gut_ your pretty whore over there-"

It draws back a fist, and ( _no_ ) there's a knife in its grip, serrated blade set with runes, looks awful like Ruby's and Dean doesn't know what it'd take to _(no)_ kill Cas these days but fucked if he's gonna find out. Fury-strong, he lunges forward, grabs the thing's wrist, yanks as hard as he can. _Spits_ the last three syllables of the exorcism into the demon's face.

The Marine's head snaps back, tendons cording out in his neck as a cloud of sulphurous black smoke torrents out of his mouth, tearing the mask off as it goes. When it's gone, dissipating into the humid air, the man stares at Dean for a second, jaw slack with shock, then collapses to his knees and throws up.

There's a commotion going on around them – Dean's absently aware of Jo's gasp of relief, men shouting, someone running up to pull the guy he just exorcised to his feet, incredulous yells of _what_ was _that? –_ but it doesn't matter. None of that matters. Nothing but Cas matters. _Cas_ , sprawled in the road, breathing hard , trembling faintly as Dean runs his hands down over him in a frantic check for injuries ( _gotta be okay, he's gotta be okay_ ).

"Dean. _Dean_ ," Cas is saying, reaching up to grip at the back of his neck. His hand is tight on Dean's nape, painful, but reassuring in its strength. "I'm fine. It's okay, I'm fine."And he's smiling, just a little, cracked lips pulling up at the corners, eyes crinkling and not sad at all. And then Dean lets himself believe it: _He's okay_.

Dean presses their foreheads together, both slick with sweat, eyes closed, and lets out a shaky breath, feels almost sick with relief when there's an answering puff of breath against his lips. Fuck, that was too close. It's always too close, their lives consist of nothing _but_ too close, but that – that was much too close for comfort.

After a moment, he opens his eyes – and there's Cas, right there, near enough to taste. Suddenly he's hit by the desire to push him down into the ground, crowd up against him and press their mouths together, kiss him with that half-mad ferocity that always overtakes them after one or the other has a little brush with death. It's stronger than he'd ever have believed before this thing with Cas started, almost a physical _need_ , a red-hot itch under his skin, maddening –

But no. There's a half dozen freaked out Marines, plus Jo, watching. Not to mention imminent death in the form of blood-crazed Croats apt to descend on them at any time. _Focus, idjit._

He pats Cas's cheek ( _not shaking, that hand is_ not _shaking_ ), and grips his wrist, pulls him to his feet. "Later," Cas tells him, voice all low and gravel. While Dean tries to control his response to that ( _come the fuck on)_ , Cas steps around him, and lets Jo hug him, ruffles her hair briefly when she jabs him in the ribs.

Then O'Neill appears at Dean's side, a Marine who can't be more than twenty propping up the guy he just exorcised. Man's green around the gills, but in a much better state than a lot of folks who just had a demon ripped out of them are. He rasps, "That – that was a demon, wasn't it?" Then, before Dean has time to answer, blurts out, " _Thank you_."

He sounds frighteningly earnest ( _like Sam at his most chick-flick_ ) and his eyes actually look like they might be tearing up, and near-death experiences Dean can handle, but this? Above and beyond the call of duty, man. "Hey, just doing my job," he says, rubbing at the back of his neck.

Thank God, O'Neill takes over at that point. He's looking grimmer than ever, and his face is a couple shades whiter than it was ten minutes ago, but he's not bugging out, and Dean's gotta respect that. Not everyone can handle an exorcism without freaking. "You're actually not crazy," he says, resigned.

"No, sir," Dean tells him, as un-smug as he can, and then because he can't help it, adds, "Well, I kinda hunt demons for a living, so ..."

O'Neill ignores that witticism, and says calmly, "So, demons. How do we deal with them?"

 _All right, all right, now we're getting somewhere._ "We've all got exorcisms memorised, there's sigils you can use to trap 'em, salt and holy water will hurt 'em but not kill 'em –"

Jo cuts in, " _These_ kill 'em." She gives her angel blade a twirl, for all the world like a cheerleader with a baton, then stoops to pick up the demon's knife, hands it to Dean. "Speaking of, that might come in handy."

He takes the knife, slides it through his belt, and tells O'Neill, "Anyways, like Cas was saying, we think the demons have some mind control thing going on with the Croats. Take them out, Croats are gonna be a damn sight easier to gank. Ants without a queen." That was how Bobby had described it when he came up with the theory, pieced together from reading between the lines of official reports and the garbled voicemails left by the few hunters back East who'd managed to live long enough even for that.

The Sergeant glazed over a little at the demon-killing spiel, but he snaps back into focus the minute Dean mentions the Croats. Eyes narrowed shrewdly, he says, "So, what you're telling me is, if we kill these – these _demons_ , then we've got a chance of holding the city?"

"That's right," Jo says, and Dean thinks if he hadn't hunted with her as much as he has, he wouldn't even see the clench of her jaw that says she's just as tight-wound on the inside as he is. Yeah, there's a chance, which is more than they've got otherwise, but still.

If they make it out of Atlanta, they're gonna have to wade through blood to do it. And Dean's fine with that, he is, greater good and all, ( _and besides, slaughter's all he's ever been good for_ ) but it sticks in his craw sometimes, watching Jo and Cas become this. Not like they've got any other choice, but he doesn't have to like it.

Cas sidles in close at Dean's side, makes a gesture towards their improvised barricade. And beyond that, around the corner, the schmancy hotel they were planning to attack before they got overwhelmed by the sheer number of the Croats getting thrown their way. "The demons have made their base just around there. If we're going to make a move, we need to make it _now._ "

The two younger Marines blanch at that, but O'Neill just nods. Says, matter-of-fact, "What do you need from us?"

Dean has a moment of mental vertigo when he realises everyone is looking at him. Cas, even, and he's a bazillion years old and oughta have more sense. For that moment, he thinks, _oh fuck, I don't know_ , and his blood is cold with the certainty that there's no one else to turn to, to stop him screwing up – but he does know.

Fuck the angels, fuck heaven, fuck their destiny crap. John Winchester had the right of it all along – Dean's a killer, he's a weapon, he was born for _this._

He looks O'Neill in the eye. Says, calm, "I need your people to get us through the Croats, into that building, and keep them out and off of our asses while we're in. We'll take out the demons." No clue how many hellspawn there are. Doesn't matter. His blood is singing with purpose, and he's got Cas and he's got Jo. It only takes a quick glance at them, the look in their eyes, to know they're thinking what he is: they'll do this if it fucking kills them.

O'Neill's lips thin a little. Unless he's a damn sight stupider than he looks, he's realising Dean basically just asked him and his men to be their human shield. But he doesn't look away, and all he says is, "Roger that. You make sure you get every last one of the bastards." Then he turns on his heel to go tell his men the score.

Dean lets out a long breath he wasn't even aware he was holding. Rubs at his mouth. Looks over at Cas, at Jo. Can't think of a damn thing to say. They're all still here, still with one another, and far as he's concerned, that's said all that needs saying. Words never were his thing. Can't trust words, not like you can trust a solid presence at your shoulder, guarding your side.

Jo raises a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, gives him and Cas a smile that's more a teeth-baring than a grin. Cas lifts his angel blade to the shoulder, twists his wrist and flicks it in this knife-maniac salute to Jo, and gives Dean a long, heavy stare ( _makes that handprint-scar burn_ ). They pull their makeshift masks back into place.

Then O'Neill's back, assault rifle in his hands, grim-faced Marines ranked behind him. And yeah, okay, they're gonna _do_ this. "You three ready?"

He's got a demon knife at his belt, holy water in his pocket, a salt-loaded shotgun in the duffle at Cas's shoulder. Cas on one side, Jo on the other. "Yes, sir."

The Sergeant nods, looks the three of them over. "Then we'll see you on the other side."

* * *

Night has fallen, blessedly dark and cool, by the time they limp back to the Marines' temporary HQ. There's six of them: Dean and Cas and Jo, O'Neill and two of his men. Six out of the fifteen that set out, and it's a minor miracle as many as that came out of it all alive and ( _at least mostly_ ) in one piece.

Ellen's there, comes running out to meet them, bear hug them and tut over Jo's spectacularly split lips and the gash down Cas's arm and Dean's knee, skinned down to the bone. Shakes O'Neill's hand, thanks him over and over for bringing her kids back to her, trying for gruff and missing by a mile, and even Jo's too worn out to protest they aren't _kids._ She hands him back the keys to the Impala, tells him it’s stashed round back with the Army cars, and he does his best to summon up a smile.

The perimeter of the base-camp is lined with salt, and there are Sharpie anti-possession sigils everywhere he looks, scrawled on necks and wrists and shoulders, devils' traps at every door. Fuck knows how Ellen managed to convince them all, but no one gets shit done like Ellen Harvelle. Dean doesn't ask, just lets her drag them through into some tent that smells of stale sweat and desperation.

It's too hot and the air is sour and there are too many people, making his head swim, heart tripping in his chest. Crowds mean danger, mean Croats piling on top of you, mean blood and teeth and getting down to your last bullet – no. No. Not here. Not now. Get a fucking grip.

There are a clutch of army medics, run ragged, and one of them swipes antiseptic over his knee ( _stings like a goddamn bitch_ ) and gives him a couple Vicodin ( _always helps)_. There's food and ( _thank you thank you thank you)_ water pressed into shaking hands,as they collapse onto one of the benches and stuff their faces Ellen stands over them, wards off the sergeant who starts trying to ask questions. The food's dehydrated Army rations, right up there with the worst of the gas-station dinners, and the water's tepid, but right now? Manna from heaven.

Water so his tongue stops feeling so cracked and swollen, something in his belly to chase away the shakes, Vicodin-numbness starting to ooze through him, and he's feeling almost-human again. Mind starting to catch up with his body, let go of the fight-or-flight so he's not flinching every time someone's shoulder bumps against him –

Needs something else to focus on, that's the only way of getting out of the hunt, times like these. So he asks Ellen, "Catch us up, what's gone down?" and almost immediately wishes he'd kept his damn fool mouth shut.

Near a quarter-million confirmed dead, not including military casualties. Just under eighty thousand survivors evacuated, including Theo ( _don't look at me like that, Dean, top brass orders and he's a minor, kid's got your cell number, he'll hang in there till we can go get ahold of him_ ). Croatoan reports coming in from across the state. After everything, orders are to abandon Atlanta –

At that, Jo puts her head down on the table and starts crying. Not loud, not loudly at all, and that's somehow worse, just this quiet, defeated sniffling. Dean thinks it'd be easier if it was loud, if she got hysterical. He knows how to deal with people when they get hysterical. Cas puts his hand on her shoulder, holds tight and doesn't let go. He looks over at Dean and his eyes are this sad, sad, shade of blue, looks like he's drowning, and all Dean wants to do is crawl into bed somewhere and sleep forever, but Cas is still looking at him like he knows what to do.

And yeah, okay. This is how he copes. How he's always coped. Because he fucking _has_ to, because someone else ( _the vic, his father, his brother, Cas_ ) is looking to him and needs him to damn well hold it together. And so he says, "We need to talk to Bobby. Get hold of hunters, hold of the Army, knock some heads together, sort some shit out. Get ourselves freaking _organised_. Yeah?"

Sounds kinda weak to him, but Cas is nodding, kicking Dean gently under the table _(their silent_ yeah-go-you _signal, and when exactly did they develop a silent language?_ ). Jo lifts her head slightly, makes a muffled noise that sounds vaguely like _uh-huh_.

But Ellen, Ellen leans in close, a frown dragging at her brows, the corners of her eyes. She says in an undertone, "Kid, I hear what you're saying, but – well. There's been talk about the Army, what they're doing, what the generals and such wanna do –"

"We've all heard the rumours," Cas cuts her off, and ain't that the truth. Rumours, kinda like the demon-rumours that have been going around, here and there, wherever Croatoan touches. Mass shootings, killing the uninfected to maintain quarantine, gearing up to bomb out infected towns, trying to use the virus as a weapon – half of it he's sure is outright bullshit, and the other half? Well, not like he's in any position to throw stones, after all.

He rubs at the back of his neck, hesitates. Ellen wasn't a full-blown hunter till a couple years back, but she's got damn good instincts, and he's trusted to that and the integrity of her moral compass before now, without even blinking. This, though ...

Before he can say anything, Jo lifts her head off the table. Her eyes are red-raw and hollow, lips bleeding freely again, voice painfully hoarse. "Mom. Get with the goddamn program. We're looking at the Apocalypse here, Lucifer's fucking masterplan. Need all the help we can get, end of."

Cas is looking at him, that wide-open, expectant expression he gets when he comes up against something human he doesn't understand, and he's waiting for Dean to explain it. And he knows, with deep gut-certainty, Cas'll follow his lead in this, like he followed his lead right out of heaven. Sometimes the weight of that trust is too much ( _don't don't I'll fuck it up again)_ , and then sometimes it's ( _a second chance_ ) all he's got.

He reaches out to squeeze Jo's shoulder briefly, hopes she gets his wordless message of _hang in there_ , and tells Ellen with war-worn conviction, "She's right. If we've gotta fight fire with fire, that's what we're gonna do. Okay?"

There's doubt in Ellen's dark eyes, but she doesn't argue.


	5. Runs In The Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There they are, out back in the scrap-yard, laid out on the ground, watching the sunset paint itself crimson over the sky. Jo and Cas are using Dean as a pillow, Jo's head resting on his stomach, Cas's on his chest, and they pass the joint between them, Jo to Cas, Cas to Dean, Dean to Jo, and so it goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is NSFW. Not immensely explicit, but ... NSFW.

_'Let me tell you, I've been lying for years. That must be why I'm standing in this space, constantly and over and over, disregarding that I have created these monsters.'_

* * *

Less than a month after they lose Atlanta, they're back in Sioux Falls, back at Bobby's. Tomorrow they're hosting some kind of strategy meeting, them and pretty much every other hunter in the continental US who's still alive. A smattering of military folks are in on it too, the ones who've been dragged kicking and screaming into the real _(end of the_ ) world. The whole conference thing was Bobby's scheme, an idea he cooked up with Cas, who apparently doesn't understand that getting a bunch of hunters to agree on anything might as well be one of the fucking labours of Hercules.

Dean hadn't bothered pointing this out, because he thought it'd never happen. That number of hunters under one roof, even temporarily? Not gonna happen. Not unless they're handing out free drinks and silver bullets. Too many memories of hunts gone wrong, too many grudges, too many goddamn _egos_.

Turns out, he underestimated what Bobby Singer and Ellen Harvelle are capable of when they're working together, and how motivating an impending zombie apocalypse can be. So tomorrow all the hunters and assorted military types are descending on them, couple dozen all told, and keeping _that_ from ending ( _bloody_ ) in tears is gonna make refereeing Dad and Sam's knock-down-drag-out rows look like a bed of roses.

Rufus Turner and Kate Weiss, this National Guard lady they worked with on a Croatoan case in Minnesota a few months back, are here already. The two of them rolled in, set up a poker game with Ellen and Bobby, and then promptly kicked Dean and Cas out, on the grounds that Bobby _ain't gonna be hustled in my own house_. ThenEllen kicked Jo out to _keep those boys out of mischief_ , which is a joke since it's Jo who produces the weed.

So there they are, out back in the scrap-yard, laid out on the ground, watching the sunset paint itself crimson over the sky. Jo and Cas are using Dean as a pillow, Jo's head resting on his stomach, Cas's on his chest, and they pass the joint between them, Jo to Cas, Cas to Dean, Dean to Jo, and so it goes.

It feels like forever since there's been a chance to take a break like this. Smoke a little pot for the pure hell of it ( _rather than knocking back Valium to sleep, Jack Daniels to forget, speed to power through a forty-hour massacre after a ten-hour drive on zero shut-eye_ ). Argue over whether Gandalf could take down Obi-Wan. Watch the stars come out. Breathe.

He could almost forget about ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer, and Croatoan, and the little old lady he shot at point blank range last week at that rest stop on I-90.

For a while they talk about everything and nothing, letting the conversation drift. They slide from Star Wars to where you'll find the best pie in the lower forty-eight to Colts versus Berettas to why Led Zep are the best band in the history of ever to a terrible puns contest. That last only ends when none of them can actually breathe anymore, Dean having to bite his knuckles to keep from crying, because awful jokes are the best even when you _aren't_ mildly stoned.

By this point it's dark, just the tired light from the house behind them to see by, and deliciously cool. The stars are out, the moon a barely-there sliver, and damn it, he forgot how good this is. Star-gazing always makes him feel insignificant, but it's a nice kind of insignificant, a _the-world-is-really-sorta-awesome_ kind. When he was about fifteen, that time they stayed in Iowa for three months straight, he'd had a real good physics teacher, who'd told him when you look at the stars, because of how long it takes their light to reach Earth, you're looking back in time. He's never forgotten that.

Looking at those stars, he's looking back to when Cas was young.

Maybe the stars and the night have that kind of effect on Jo, too, or maybe it's just the way weed makes everyone and their mother a philosopher, because she says, "Man ... makes you feel small, doesn't it? Although, probably not you, huh, Cas?"

And Cas – Cas who never talks about the whole _angel_ thing unless Dean prods the hell out of him, and then only the barest of bones – says, "Nothing makes me feel smaller than looking into stars. My brother Gabriel, he took some of us to see inside one, once, back when I was a baby, and it's just like ..." He lifts a hand, waves it expansively at the sky. "All the power, all the light. And they don't ever stop. Or, or, or doubt, or _worry_ , you see? Stars don't worry about anything."

It'd sound ridiculous if it wasn't for the way Cas's voice husks over it, so serious. He always means what he says, Cas does. Dean doesn't think he's ever met anyone who means what they say so much. It's adorable. Just a bit.

Jo says, "Maybe they do, though. I wonder about stuff, you know? Maybe, like, _plants_ are conscious, and we just don't know. I mean, how would you even know?"

And then they're off on some, like, full-on existentialist philosophist tangent, and that's a train Dean just can't get on board. If it ain't something he can see, hear, eat, drink, shoot, or fuck, he ain't got time for it. It all sounds pretty profound, Cas getting real chatty, dispensing all this angelic wisdom he's been sitting on, and that's kinda ironic because either he can't hold his weed, or he's been getting even more human behind Dean's back. For his birthday this year ( _thirty-three, how the fuck did_ that _happen?_ ) Bobby gave him a load of Jack Daniels, and it'd taken practically half the bottle to get Cas half drunk, and now one joint and he's all _the stars don't worry about anything_. Goddamn, dude.

Anyway, Jo and Cas have this deep, rambling, possibly wise and profound, definitely high, conversation while Dean lets himself zone out a little. The stars are bright, and there's that sweet fragrant smoke on the air, and he's missed this feeling more than he realised, thoughts all slow and soft and content.

Could be hours later, they finish the joint, and Jo tries to roll up another, can't. She and Cas have a little giggle about that, and Dean does it for her, lights it up with her shiny silver lighter ( _twin to one Sammy had years ago_ ), easy peasy, his hands always do what he wants. Rest of him might be a bit shit, but he's good with his hands. Always has been. Even when he's drunk, even when he's high, maybe especially when he's high, because he gets a bit handsy.

Sammy was always a weepy, moody drunk, grabby into the bargain ( _Dean's least favourite kind of drunk, always one that latches onto him in bars, got him so much static from Dad, back in the day)_ , and chatty as hell on the rare occasions Dean'd talk him into getting stoned. Dean, though, Dean's friendly and reckless when he's drunk, and just likes to touch things when he's high. Not, like, in a creepy way, he hates creepsters, he does, just in a – well, a touchy way. It's like, he smokes a little and his skin comes alive and starts feeling things in more dimensions. If feeling has dimensions. What the fuck ever.

Point is, he just likes touching things, feels good, and at the moment Cas's hair is _right there_ , and that always feels good anyways. Jo's right there, too, of course, and maybe he shouldn't, but it's not like she doesn't already know ( _caught him kissing Cas against the Impala a couple months ago, figured him out way back when, even_ ). It's not like Dad's here to scream the walls down round his ears, not like Sammy's here to realise his big brother's been lying for years.

So he just pushes his fingers through Cas's hair, messing it up, stroking it, scratching at the nape of his neck where it's all short and wispy. Feels nice. So goddamn soft. Maybe angels have self-conditioning hair or some shit. It'd be just like Cas to keep something like that a secret.

Cas pushes his head into the touch, just a little, doesn't look at him, keeps on talking to Jo. Dean doesn't mind. Watches the stars up above, pets Cas's hair with one hand, smokes with the other.

Sky's so deep and dark, dark like Cas's hair, and he thinks maybe that hair feels the way the sky looks. The way Cas's eyes look. Like it could swallow him up. Not that hair can swallow, that would be weird. But yeah. This is nice. Feels like being happy, maybe. He can't quite remember.

Jo's saying something about time, and then Cas is telling her, "It's not a line. You have to understand, it's not a line, okay?"

And Jo says, "Alright Einstein, what is it, then?" 

Cas lifts a hand and starts waving it expansively. "It's like – more –"

"Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey?" Dean suggests helpfully.

Cas stops waving his hand around and gives Dean a _look_. "What the fuck?" he says, severely, as if he was a proper angel and not some weird almost-human thing and not also really fucking baked.

Jo comes up on her elbow, propping herself upright and grinning wide and loose. "Oh, my God, how high _are_ you? Fucking lightweight, man."

"It's a _reference_ ," Dean protests. They both look just as blank as ever, and he huffs. " _Philistines._ And you," he pokes Cas in the ribs, "watch your mouth."

Cas just smirks, eyes big and glassy, and Jo snorts a laugh, settling back down with her head on Dean's stomach again. "It's your own fault, dude. You're the one taught an angel to swear."

He sighs, knows when he's beaten, passes the joint to Jo. Cas tugs at his wrist, pulls his hand back into place at the crown of Cas's head.

And yeah, okay. Cas wants him to touch, that makes it even better, because he's never quite sure. He knows the way Cas sees touching and all that isn't quite how Dean sees it, and he doesn't know why, doesn't know which of them is fucked up about it, so it's nice to know they both like it right now. Both need it, maybe. Cas lying on Dean and Dean holding onto Cas, so they don't start drifting off, floating away into the sky. It's good.

He lets the others go on talking, lets his hand slide all gentle through that soft hair, brush against Cas's jaw, and that's kinda nice, too. Normally, he doesn't like stubble, always went for clean-shaven when he went that way, but it's an interesting contrast. Soft hair, soft skin at the temples and eyes and nose, prickly stubble down over cheeks and jaw. He can map that ( _pretty, pretty_ ) face out by touch alone. Always has been good with his hands.

At some point his fingers drift over Cas's lips, silky and warm, sometimes they're chapped but they aren't tonight, all smooth. He's kissed those lips, and that hardly seems real, like maybe he just dreamt it up. If anyone'd told him a couple years back he'd ever kiss Cas, he'd laugh 'em right out of town. Dude's an _angel_ , for fuck's sake. Never gonna happen.

Except he _isn't_ an angel, not anymore, and so it has happened.

Dean's just thinking this when Cas bites at his fingers. He yelps in surprise, and Cas laughs, grabbing at his wrist as Dean gets his other hand tangled in his hair, play-tussling a little. Cas nips his fingers again, then the base of his wrist, close and intimate –

Jo laughs, hoarse with smoke, pushes up to her feet. "And I think that's my cue to go get some shut-eye, boys." She toes Dean in the side, dodges both their attempts to trip her up. Waves the joint at them as she makes her way, weaving slightly, back toward Bobby's house. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do, now. Or any _one_."

"Fuck off," Dean yells after her, but he's grinning, and Cas is looking at him, smirking, eyes gleaming in the dark.

He's still got hold of Dean's wrist, and for a moment Dean wonders why, his mind a little slow, kinda foggy, he knows there's a reason but he can't quite remember. Then Cas leans right down over him, other hand beside Dean's head, bracing himself, and kisses him. Kisses him hard, all pressure and teeth and tongue, and okay. Okay, then.

Ain't like kissing's ever been _boring_ , exactly, hell, quite the reverse, but this. _This_. Maybe it's just the weed, bringing every inch of his skin to life, but it's like Cas is setting him on fire. Pressing up against him, kissing like his life depends on it, and the smell of him is everywhere, familiar and alien all at once.

Dean tries to sit up, and Cas gets a hand on his shoulder, locked against the mark he seared into it ( _gripped you tight_ ) and shoves him back down. Pins him against the dry-dust earth, pushes a leg between Dean's, and all his weight's right _there_. All of it on Dean, and he can feel every movement, every breath, and fuck, it's so much but it's not enough.

He pushes a hand up under Cas's t-shirt, scrapes his nails down the arc of his spine, over muscles that bunch and twitch under his touch. Cas's mouth slips away from his, and he whines ( _kissed a lot of mouths and Cas has the sweetest_ ), but then it's at his throat, sucking hot and wet at the beat of his pulse. Everything's spinning, feels like he's falling, nothing real except for Cas, and Cas is everywhere. Inescapable.

Cas bites down on his neck, and Dean moans ( _loud, gonna regret that tomorrow_ ), grabs at his hair, his belt, holding him close. Son-of-a-bitch can't flap away from him this time, no sir. And Cas bucks his hips down in response, grinding them together. He's hard, too, Dean can feel that, and he's glad, hell yes he is, because it doesn't often happen that they're in sync like this.

There's always been some kind of disconnect in Cas, the angel and the vessel two parts that won't quite click together, even now. But tonight they're both on board, and Dean's gonna make the most of it. Cuz Castielmight be a wavelength or some shit when he's at home, but right now he's here, he's a guy, and yeah, he's amazing and he's Dean's best friend and all that, but he's also really fucking hot.

So he slides his hand down, gropes at Cas's ass ( _finally, finally_ ), and thrusts up in reply to the way Cas is rolling his hips, arching his back. Lifts a knee so Cas can rub against him, which he does, all eager, and why the fuck didn't they get wasted and do this years ago? Fuck his past self and all his morals and all that shit. Fuck it all.

Then Cas shoves a hand down between them, grips Dean's erection through his jeans, and he lets out a noise he's gonna deny the hell out of in the morning. It's just – it's so good, that pressure, and it's _Cas_ , and that makes it so much better. He's had faceless, nameless fucks before, and some of them were goddamn stellar ( _that one redheaded stripper, the girl in Ohio with all the piercings, the biker dude from that hunt in New York_ ) but this? This is him and Cas, and there's some kind of alchemy between them. Makes this thing of theirs ( _whatever it is_ ) more than the sum of its parts.

Cas flexes his hand, and Dean makes that noise again, and Cas smirks against his neck, damn him. "Shut up, you," Dean pants, smacks his ass, just a little.

That gets him a chuckle, all breathy and a bit wrecked, and Cas, sounding like that? Well, Dean could get used to it. Then Cas is rubbing up against him, hand working, should be illegal, damn it, and that gravel-raw voice of his is at his ear. "Dean."

Could _definitely_ get used to this. "Yeah?"

Thing about Cas is, he's got less than zero in the way of self-consciousness or shame, the freak, and while that does suck when you're trying to pass him off as halfway normal, it makes him the absolute Olympic champion dirty-talker of everyone Dean's ever fucked about with. Which is a pretty extensive and impressive list, if he does say so himself. So he's expecting _something_ hot, alright, but what he gets is, "I want to fuck you."

And, well, _shit_. The world's been spinning for a while now but that, that thought, it makes him feel like he really might fall off the goddamn planet.

Because yeah, they've been messing around for a while now, few months, since Redruth, Iowa, but it was accidental to begin with, and it's still usually accidental whenever it happens. And when things are accidental, see, you don't have premeditation ( _he does remember some of Sammy's lawyer-ing bullshit_ ) and premeditation helps if you're gonna do that particular thing. So they've done plenty –kissing like teenagers to keep the nightmares at bay, hand-jobs sweaty and stolen after the Croats are dead and they're still alive, that time he blew Cas, backseat of the Impala, both of them head-to-toe in mud and blood, peerlessly romantic – but they haven't gotten _there_ yet.

Damn, it sounds like a good idea. Cas is a freaking genius when he wants to be.

So Dean says, "Cas, fucking hell, man. _Yeah._ "

It all takes a bit of effort – getting upright, over to the Impala, hunting down a flashlight and then lube and condoms from wherever Dean stashed them – what with the way the world is spinning and Cas also being distracting, but they work together because they're awesome like that. And then it's just them. Them and the pinprick stars and the skeletons of cars and the earth that's still warm from the sun, like it's alive, breathing beneath their bodies. And Cas's hands, his skin, his teeth, all of him, everywhere, his eyes gleaming ravenous when they catch the light from the flashlight, pupils huge, face wide open with desire, and Dean's never seen him look this human before. Not even close. Loves ( _hates_ ) that he was the one to make him look like that.

When Cas comes, he arches his back, and Dean grabs at his shoulder blades, digs in his nails. He remembers the twenty-foot wingspan Castiel once showed off ( _an angel of the Lord_ ), and wonders if this, _this_ , Cas fucking him in a scrap-yard in the middle of the night, is what will drag the last of the Grace from him. Then Cas bites down on that pressure point at the base of his neck ( _knows every spot that drives him mad, course he does, rebuilt him from the ground up_ ) and twists his wrist, gives Dean a near-savage jerk, and that's that.

Dean buries a hand in Cas's sweaty hair, closes his eyes, doesn't think anything at all.

* * *

 

"– and this is _exactly_ why the founding fathers gave us the goddamn right to bear arms!"

Jo leans over to murmur in Dean's ear, "I'm like, about a thousand percent sure they didn't write the Second Amendment with the freaking zombie apocalypse in mind." He has to duck his head and fake a coughing fit, because he's got a feeling laughing in the face of some frothing-at-the-mouth loon is not _quite_ what Bobby had in mind when he ordered Jo and Dean to _play nice or else_. But seriously? Where in the hell does Bobby dig these idiots up from?

There's no point trying to cram them all inside the house, so they're out back, sitting round Bobby's ancient dining table _(stroke operating table_ ), on the mismatched chairs and crates Dean and Rufus spent all morning dragging about. It's hot again, the sun high and bright. He can already feel the beginnings of another killer sunburn prickling at the back of his neck. Between that, the aches and pains courtesy of a night on Bobby's shitheap of a couch, the bleary eyes courtesy of Jo's weed, and the freaking hickey on his neck ( _and all the smirks that's getting_ ) courtesy of Cas, he's not in a stellar mood to begin with. Let alone having to listen to this idiocy as well.

Sure, there's a few folks here who know their shit – the Harvelles and Rufus of course, Roy and Walt who Dean showed the ropes way back when, and Daniel Moule who's a grade-A douche but a good hunter. Then there's Kate Weiss, and Sergeant O'Neill with his niece, a cop named Risa who looks tough as nails, and an Army captain Rufus knows called Sinclair who insisted on seeing them all drink holy water and checking their eyes before he'd sit down.

Apart from that? There's six or seven small-time hunters who aren't even clued up enough to have anti-possession tattoos, and an assortment of military and police types, most of them looking askance at all Bobby's Devils' Traps and salt lines. The bloodbath _(Sam)_ Lucifer made of the East took out almost every hunter Dean'd want in on this thing, left them with nothing but civilians and the dregs. Don't exactly fill him with confidence.

O'Neill's cut in now, saying something about the country going into martial law, and legalising the formation of independent militias, and damn, if that ain't the most common-sense idea Dean's heard in a long while. Shame it takes the End of Days for the government to get their heads out their asses.

"If we can work together like that, we'll have a much better chance at getting things under control than you folks do running around on your own. No disrespect, but right now you just don't have the firepower." O'Neill glances across at Dean, and he gives the Marine a quick nod in reply.

It rankles, it does, but it's the truth, and he's known that since _(Detroit_ ) Redruth. They aren't packing anything that even comes close to matching what Hell can throw at them. Not that the Army is either, not really, but assault rifles and armoured cars are a damn sight better than shotguns and ( _sorry, baby_ ) the Impala when you're neck-deep in Croats.

Then one of the hunters Dean doesn't really know, guy named Acconci – about Bobby's age with a hell of a burn scar down his face, who spent the whole afternoon _hem_ -ing and _haw_ -ing – finally works up the balls to actually say something. "Now look, we hunters, we've always done things quiet-like, just ones or twos, longer'n I can remember. That's just the way we work, none of this running around in packs, messing about with the military, we gotta keep things under the radar. I've been doing this twenty-five years and –"

Dean laughs out loud. Can't help it, it's just too fucking funny. _Keep things under the radar_ , Christ.

Ellen kicks him under the table, and Bobby's glaring something fierce, but it's too late. Jo's leaning forwards, eyes glazed dark the way they were back in Atlanta. "That's bullshit," she snaps. "There's, what, five, ten million dead already in the States alone, and you wanna stay off of the radar? Please. You ain't got a clue what we're dealing with."

Acconci's glaring now. "Alright, little lady, what _are_ we dealing with, then?" Tone like that, he oughta be grateful the little lady hasn't got her throwing knives to hand.

It's Cas who answers. Looks the man dead in the eyes, and says, "The Apocalypse." And yeah, Cas is all red-eyed and rumpled and stubbly, made Dean help him with his shirt buttons this morning in front of everyone, but he can still turn on that angel voice. The stone-cold conviction that might be coming out of a human mouth, but can't be mistaken for anything, _anything,_ mortal.

Coming from anyone else it'd sound absurd. Coming from Castiel it sounds like a death sentence.

Martinez, this lady cop from California, starts chuckling, then takes a look at Cas, at Dean on his one side and Bobby on his other, at the Harvelles, all of them unsmiling, and stops short. "Shit, you're _serious_? The Apocalypse? You've gotta be kidding me."

"I wish he were, lady," Dean says, pours himself another couple fingers from the bottle of Jack they're passing round.

"You're not – you can't –" Acconci passes a hand down over his scarred face, appeals to Bobby. "Singer, you can't believe this crap?"

Bobby throws up his hands. "Don't y'all read the newspapers? We got Croatoan in North America, South America, Europe's got the freaking bubonic plague on top of that, forty days of locusts in China, meteor showers and electric storms up the wazoo, it's raining fire down in Australia, oh, yeah, and last week? The River Nile turned to blood. CNN's a checklist of Revelations omens. So damn right I believe this crap. Wake up and smell the brimstone, all of you, cuz this is it."

Ringing silence. Acconci's staring at Bobby, eyes huge, keeps opening and shutting his mouth uselessly. Across from Dean, Kate Weiss is biting her nails frenetically, and O'Neill's paled visibly, won't look at him, but Risa's got her jaw clenched and meets his gaze levelly. Good to know not all the civilians scare so easy.

Beside him, Cas is getting tense, fingers drumming on the edge of the table impatiently, and yeah. Time to get this thing moving. He knocks back his whisky, says brightly into the stunned quiet, "Look, folks. Ganking a load of Croats, that's fine and dandy, but we gotta look at the bigger picture here. All the AK-47s and holy water in the world won't do us much good, not in the long run, alright? We need to dream a little bigger."

Daniel Moule snorts derisively, crosses his arms. "What d'you suggest then, Winchester?" Same snotty tone he always used on Dad back in the day, same superior little smirk, same up-his-own-ass Boston accent. Fuck, half the east coast gets torn to pieces in a week and Daniel Moule's in Oregon at the time? What are the odds?

Dean grins, knows it'll wind Moule up even further, spins his empty glass in his hands. "The Colt. I'm suggesting the Colt."

That gets double-takes right around the circle, every single one of the visiting hunters looking like he smacked 'em in the face. It'd be kinda gratifying if it wasn't pathetic that none of them even thought of this themselves. Walt says slowly, "But no-one's seen the Colt since, I dunno, the 40s …"

"Exactly." Moule leans forward, clasping his hands on the table, says, "Sorry to disappoint you, Winchester, but better men than you've spent their entire lives looking for the damn thing and gotten nowhere. You'd better stick to the AK-47s."

Little fucker's as patronising as Zachariah, as Alastair, as Sam at his most college-boy condescending. For a moment Dean sees red ( _we bled for that gun, my Dad fucking bled to get that gun_ ), wants nothing more than his hands round Moule's throat.

 He'd make a lunge for him, too, give it a try – if it weren't for Cas's hand like an anchor on his knee under the table. He glances across and Cas has his poker face on, angel-blank, but he meets Dean's eyes and shakes his head almost imperceptibly. And Cas may be kinda stupid at human things, even now, but over the last three years, if nothing else, Dean's learnt when to shut up and just trust his partner's draw.

So he bites his tongue while Ellen pours out another round of drinks, smirks when she says calmly, "The name Azazel mean anything to you?"

Moule shifts in his seat impatiently. "'Course. Yellow-eyed demon, the big cheese in Hell before Lilith came along. He's old news, dropped off the map, what, five years ago? What –"

"He dropped off of the map because I shot him in the face," Dean says, and damn, but that's satisfying. Moule and Walt and Roy and all the others are staring at him, and he can almost _feel_ the gun in his hand. Feel the trigger fitting his finger like destiny, the almighty hundred-and-fifty-year-old kick of it, the acrid ozone smell in the wake of the thirteenth bullet's lightning strike between those Hell-yellow eyes. Ah, memories. "With the Colt."

" _Shit_ ," Acconci breathes, and it's an effort not to burst out laughing again. Vindication is sweet.

But Moule's eyes are narrowed, and he says, "So, what happened between then and now, huh? Forget it in a motel room, did you?"

Dean's cheeks flame, hands itching to strangle the smug little git. He deserves a freaking medal for keeping his seat and letting Bobby say irritably, "Bela Talbot stole it, and I know for a fact she's gotten the jump on you before now, Daniel. So you can get down off of that high horse."

Moule looks like he's maybe considering mouthing off a little more, but Risa gets there first. She's been quiet all day, just sitting back and taking everything in, but now she pipes up, "Wait, what're you talking about – finding some gun? What's the point in that?"

"It's a gun that can kill anything, demons included," Jo tells her. Catching the look of utter scepticism that descends over Risa's face, and O'Neill's, and Kate's, and all the others' ( _civilians, swear to God_ ), she adds, "Look, take our word for it, okay? We're never gonna get anywhere with this shit if we gotta, like, reel out scientific evidence for every damn thing. It's a magic gun, I know it sounds crazy, just roll with it."

Under the table, Dean gives her ankle a little kick of appreciation. Atta girl.

While the new folks chew on that, Roy raises his hand. Honest-to-God raises his hand, like he thinks he's in class, and it is an eternal mystery to Dean how this guy hasn't been eaten alive yet. "I'm not – look, I ain't clear on who you wanna go after with the Colt. It's only a revolver, right, it's not gonna help with the Croats –"

For fuck's sake. "I just _said_ ganking Croats is beside the point," Dean tells him sharply. "Get the Colt, we can kill –" ( _Sam, kill Sam)_ "– Lucifer. Kill Lucifer, whole Apocalypse is off the table, game over."

And maybe this is the type of thing you need tact to explain _(tact always was Sam's department and ain't that ironic?_ ) because at that, every single one of the civilians and a couple of the hunters lose their shit. Yelling, throwing their hands up, spluttering incredulously, laughing like idiots, whole nine yards. Chaos.

Bobby throws Dean a filthy look, tries to yell over them all, bring back something resembling order. Gets nowhere until Ellen grabs the bottle of whiskey and starts hammering it on the table like a judge with one of those little hammer things, finally enforcing something like quiet.

"Yeah, he said _Lucifer_ , the Morning Star's real, get a grip," Bobby says, and he has the nerve to think _Dean_ 's tactless? Goddamn. "You telling me none of y'all have noticed the man in white?"

_The man in white_. Source of fuck knows how many online conspiracy theories. If Dean's seen him once, he's seen the bastard a hundred times, and that's even actively trying not to – switching channels or turning the page or closing the tab at the first glimpse. No getting away from _(him_ ) it, though. Always there, sitting calmly in the ashes of a forest fire, standing unruffled amid the chaos of hurricanes, always in the background of the riots and the bombings and the massacres, like a ( _ghost_ ) shadow. A shadow in gleaming, spotless white.

Only a couple of days ago, taking a break from tuning up the Impala to grab a beer from Bobby's fridge, he'd stuck his head around the corner to see if Jo and Cas were watching anything interesting on TV. Expecting some trashy soap, maybe a movie, maybe Jo trying to explain football to Cas. Turned out to be Al Jazeera. Got a nice long look at the Nile, running red-red-red _(like the rivers in Hell_ ), and that long-legged, long-haired figure, walking barefoot across the river's sluggish blood-waves.

Some things he wishes he could forget, scrub out of his brain. Some, he hopes he never will. Needs to hold on to, to remember _(who_ ) what it is he's fighting.

"The – the – you mean the man in white is Lucifer? Satan? Is that what you're saying?" Martinez looks like she can't decide whether to throw up or pass out.

"That's what I'm saying," Bobby tells her in his patented grumpy-old-man _why the hell do I even bother with you idjits_ tone. It's really kinda novel to hear that directed at someone other than Dean ( _or Sam_ ) or Cas or Jo.

"Well, that explains a lot," Daniel Moule says, and the little shit's got this twisted little half-smile on his face, like he's trying to keep from laughing. Dean's about to ask him what the fuck he thinks is so funny, when Moule looks right at him and says, "Hey, doesn't he look _familiar_ to you?"

Sharp intake of breath from Jo. Cas grabs his arm, grip so tight it's painful. Dean doesn't even bother pretending to smile, just bares his teeth at Moule, lets the thought of how sweet it'd be to empty a clip into that smug face creep into his voice. "Oh, you noticed? Well done. Gold star for observation."

Of _course_ the son-of-a-bitch looks familiar. Dean would recognise his shadow in a crowded room, would know him anywhere, instantly, that form and face he knows ( _loathes_ ) better than his own.

"What's going on?" Kate Weiss asks sharply, gaze flicking from Moule to Dean and back again. The weight of all those too-curious stares is hotter than the beat of the midsummer sun on the back of his neck. It's like being the new kid at school all over again, like staggering into the ER and making the nurses blanch at his scar collection, and fucked if he's gonna lay it all out for these people. Fucked if he's gonna let these strangers take a look right at the dark heart of his own family.

Ellen does it for him. "It's his brother," she says, and he could love her for how strained, how sad she sounds. Like maybe he's not the only one who'll grieve _(if)_ when he puts a bullet through Sam's skull.

"That's his _brother_?" O'Neill blurts out, uncharacteristically rattled. Looks ready to say more, but Cas shoots him one of his wrath-of-Heaven glares, and that shuts him up.

Too little, too late. There's eyebrows raised all around the table, glances going back and forth, murmurs Dean can't make out, but knows he doesn't like the tone. Reminds him of when Henrikson had them in lock-up, when Gordon had hunters after them –

And like a mind-reader, with that sick Murphy's Law symmetry that's ruled Dean's life since Cas dragged him back topside, Moule says, "I ran into Gordon Walker a few years back, and let me tell you, he had some mighty interesting things to say about Sammy."

"Oh, really?" Dean snarls, and only Cas's vice-grip on his arm is keeping him in his seat.

Ellen says sharply, "Gordon was a maniac, you know that as well as anyone, Daniel."

"Maybe, but he knew what he was talking about." Moule's looking him dead in the eye now, and he's not smirking anymore, jaw set, eyes grim. Somehow Dean preferred the smugness. Easier to deal with. "Or was he wrong about your brother getting baptised with demon blood, meant to grow up to be the Anti-Christ? Cuz from where I'm sitting, looks like –"

In a tone that suggests he actually thinks he's being helpful, Cas interrupts, "Sam Winchester is not the Anti-Christ, just Lucifer's vessel. If he were the Anti-Christ, that would probably be a lot worse."

"Cas, _shut up_ ," Dean hisses through his teeth. Fucking stupid angel, swear to God.

"Yeah, yeah, semantics – but the demon blood? _Drinking_ demon blood? You gonna deny that, huh?"

They're all of them staring at him now, and fuck, he should've killed Gordon when he had the chance. Four years later and he's still haunting Dean's footsteps, and the worst of it is that the motherfucker was _right_. Just like John ( _gotta save Sammy or you gotta kill him, I'm counting on you_ ) was.

At the head of the table, Bobby knocks back another shot of whiskey, slams the glass down. "All right, yeah, it's true about the demon blood. What the hell's your point, boy?"

Before Moule can answer, Walt says incredulously, "Wait, you _knew_ about the demon blood? And you didn't do anything?"

Dean's about to retort that there's not a goddamn power in the world that could've stopped Sam ( _bullet in the brain would've_ ) once he got fixated – but, wait. "How the fuck do _you_ know about it?"

Both Walt and Roy immediately get this real shifty look on their faces. There's a story there, he's sure of it, and he's equally sure he ain't gonna like it. He taught the little shits everything they know and then they start squirrelling around after his brother, Christ –

He's about to start in on those two, when Moule says in his most supercilious drawl, "Bobby, all I'm saying is, the one brother has demon blood, let the Devil loose, and the other went to Hell, don't you think we ought to be … well, asking some questions about that?"

Dean could probably count on one hand the number of times in his life he's been speechless. This is going down on the list. He just. He's just got nothing. Not a damn thing. There's pressure pounding red at his temples, a bitch of a migraine threatening, and his nails are biting at his palms and he just doesn't have the words.

Beside him, Jo leans forward, and all of a sudden there's that little silver-plated knife she loves so much, spinning back and forth between her fingers. "Lemme get this straight, you're accusing _Dean Winchester_ of being – what? Some kind of double agent? You insane, or just fucking stupid?"

And Kate Weiss, who's only known them all about six months, adds, "I ain't got a clue what you-all are on about, but she's right. That's the man saved my little girls from being Croat fodder."

Moule gives them both this tight little smile. "That's all very nice, ladies, but you tell me, when'd you ever hear of anything but demons coming back from Hell?"

Without even missing a beat, Cas says, "I'm the one that pulled him out of Hell. I saw his soul, and I can see yours, and let me tell you, yours is in far worse condition. Keep your accusations to yourself."

He doesn't even raise his voice, but it's been years, goddamn years, since Dean's heard Cas sound like this, cold and absolutely inhuman with fury. Not since he tried to say _yes_ after Detroit, since Zachariah jumped them in Salt Lake City. And sometimes Dean forgets, forgets that this guy who rides shotgun in the Impala, who he got high with and fucked by just last night, is still, somewhere under the doe eyes and stubble and worn jeans, _Castiel._

All the hairs down the back of his neck are prickling, standing on end, and from the stunned look on Moule's face, he's not the only one.

Bobby clears his throat, probably about to attempt to drag the meeting back on course, but Walt beats him to the draw. "Look – point is, even if we do get our hands on the Colt, it'll do us no good. Because no matter what, ain't no way he's got the guts to kill his brother, and we all know it."

Alright, that's it. He's heard enough. "Shut up, Walt, you don't know shit about this –"

"Yeah, I do. If you had the balls to do what's gotta be done, we wouldn't be in this goddamn mess to begin with!"

And he's right.

Suddenly Dean's on his feet. Doesn't even know what he's doing, lost in the haze of pure fury that drove Dad for twenty-two years, that guided his own razor for ten. He's on his feet, fist slammed against the table, words spilling out, loud enough to burn. "Shut up and listen to me. All of you. I'm gonna find that Colt, and I swear, I'm gonna kill Lucifer if it means tearing my brother's heart out through his chest to do it. _Am I making myself clear_?"

Heavy, heavy silence. Cas is still glaring at Daniel Moule. Jo's little knife flicks around and around, rhythmic between her fingers, and she's silent, but she lifts her left hand, _roger-that_. Risa's eyes are fixed on him, steady, and beside her O'Neill's staring openly, sick and fascinated. Walt won't look at him, Ellen either.

Finally, Bobby says quietly, "Crystal." His expression is absolutely unreadable.


	6. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the thing rest-stop waitresses and post-hunt quickies never prepared him for – staying with the one person, having them around the whole time, it makes it hard to focus. Hard to keep your head in the game when he's in the room with you, right there, sprawled out across the bed, smiling like that, doe-eyed and loose-limbed.

' _Change everything you are, and everything you were. Your number has been called.'_

* * *

Chitaqua used to be a holiday camp, owned by a friend of Risa's up in some mountain valley in Minnesota, and if that's not an irony Dean doesn't know what is. When they rock up, Cas and Dean in the Impala, Bobby and the Harvelles in Risa's Jeep, Kate Weiss with her two little girls riding in the bed of her pick-up truck, there's still a dozen wide-eyed yuppies holed up there with Jaeger and his woodland-trail buddies.

Dean's always figured camping is a pastime for rich idiots. Once you've had to sleep in the car when it's down below zero, with only rotgut whisky and your brother to keep you warm, you fucking appreciate things like _beds_ and _central heating_ and _running water_. The motley bunch at Chitaqua may have had enough brains to realise trying to head back to the cities is pretty much suicide at this point, but otherwise? Dead weight. By Dean's lights, Emma Weiss has more about her than this lot, and she's only eleven.

Still. Useless yuppies aside, it's not a bad set up: cabins, generator, water piped from some mountain stream or something, nice sturdy fence round the perimeter.

Jaeger's crew may look askance at the assault rifles O'Neill gave them, but they at least know their way around a gun. Ted's even got a vegetable patch and a bunch of chickens, which'll likely come in handy before ( _Sam is dead_ ) things are over. The world's gotten bloody enough fast enough that nobody, not even the yuppies, freaks when Risa arrives with a bunch of scarred-up strangers talking about demonic possession and magic guns.

That's one thing to be said for the Apocalypse: it makes the whole _the truth is out there_ speech go down a lot smoother.

"It's gonna be different," Cas says, the first night. Comes out of nowhere, but he says it like they're in the middle of a conversation, the way he always does.

"What? What is?"

Dean's cleaning their weaponry – all laid out on the cabin table, the way the Marines taught Dad and Dad taught him – lost in the routine of it. On the other side of the room, Cas is stretched out on the double bed, watching him. He doesn't have quite the same intensity that he did back in the day, but Cas still has a hell of a stare when he wants to. Still feels like a physical weight on Dean's skin.

"Living here, living in one place," Cas says, and yup, dude's got a point. Hell, it's been, what? Nigh-on thirty years since ( _the fire_ ) he's had the same roof over his head for more than a couple months at a time.

The blades are all done, now to start in on the guns. Rifles first, then the shotguns, then the pistols, saving his favourite pearl-handled Colt for last. "Yeah, well. We'd better keep going out to help the Army and whatnot, supply runs too, or I am gonna go stir-crazy, fucking _Shining_ style."

"All work and no play," says Cas, grinning, and fuck it, Cas ( _being human_ ) getting shit like that, it never gets old.

He's grinning back before he knows it. Has to look back down, force himself to concentrate on the weapons, before he gets distracted. This is the thing rest-stop waitresses and post-hunt quickies never prepared him for – staying with the one person, having them around the whole time, it makes it hard to focus. Hard to keep your head in the game when he's in the room with you, right there, sprawled out across the bed, smiling like that, doe-eyed and loose-limbed.

He thinks of how they hadn't even had to discuss it, when Jaeger was showing them around the place. Cas just announced _we'll take this one_ , while Dean cracked his knuckles and gave Jaeger a look that dared him to start shit. And that was that.

They're in deep, now. In so goddamn deep, and maybe they have been for a while, since _(he got me ice, started sharing our clothes_ ) that thing in Redruth, but all of a sudden the thing just. Seems so real.

Then Cas murmurs, "It might be like having a home," and it's like crashing through rotten floorboards into the pitch-black cellar below, because, no. You can't say that. You _can't_.

There's some things he just doesn't get to have. Dean's known this since he was four years old, and these days he's mostly okay with it. But tempting fate like that? Hell, no. Not gonna fly. "No, it's not a home, Cas," he snaps, too harsh but he can't help it, "It's – I dunno – base of operations or something, but it's not that. Won't ever be that, okay?"

He looks over at Cas, and the vivid smile is gone, wiped away to leave only the blank Castiel non-expression he still wears when they're neck-deep in Croats and the bodies pile high. And that hurts a little, but it's good, too. Safe.

"You can't get attached, can't start caring, okay, Cas?" he says.

Cas squints at him, maybe confused, maybe disappointed. Sometimes the son-of-a-bitch is still as impossible to read as he was when he walked into that barn in Illinois and opened his wings wide, or when he stood in Zachariah's green room and made the decision that sealed both their fates. "Then you mustn't, either, Dean."

Dean shakes his head, goes back to the guns, the stripping down, the cleaning, movements worn ritual-deep into his memory. "Don't you worry, I've learned that lesson."

* * *

The air tastes clean in Chitaqua, and when Dean sits on the roofs of the cabins, during the day the view really is spectacular, and at night the sky is so full of stars he could forget to breathe. Ellen's in her element, manages to force military rations and canned everything into a near-delicious form every night. Bobby complains all the time about the uneven paths wrecking his wheelchair and endlessly criticises the anti-demon defences Dean and Jo are setting up about the camp, but he's softer round the edges somehow.

He's sharing a cabin with Ellen _(don't think about it, don't need those images_ ) and he spends a lot of time picking Cas's brain about angel lore, and in the evenings he starts telling Kate's girls all these embarrassing stories about Dean ( _never Sam_ ) as a kid. It's maybe as close to happy as Dean's ever seen the man, and it's the end of the goddamn world. Only Bobby Singer.

It takes about two, three weeks for Dean to start crawling up the walls. Can't sleep, can't get through the night even with the help of a few Valium and Cas holding his head in his lap. It's not that the dreams are worse, it's this – this restlessness, roaming endlessly beneath his skin. Some nervous, primitive urge to get back in the Impala, feel her growl and hum and watch the miles of blacktop spin away beneath him.

Maybe it's the way he grew up, maybe it's the way he was born, but he's not made for this, for roots, for _stillness_. How did Sam ever stand it, four years at Stanford?  How does anyone ever stand it?

All in all, it's a goddamned blessing Theo calls them when he does, about a month after they get to Chitaqua, and not just because ten days later the phone networks go down and never go back up.

Ellen gets the call – seven weeks after Atlanta, and they'd pretty much given up hope of hearing back from the kid. Thought he had to be dead, or bit, but no. He's in some kind of camp ( _and not one like Chitaqua_ ), Northern Alabama, a sixteen-hour drive away. Everyone gets all twitchy at the prospect of Dean and Cas and Ellen heading off for a couple days, but they'll deal. Jo's more than capable of holding the fort with Risa and Kate and Jaeger as back-up, and the three of them? Well, hell, they're just gonna have to risk it.

"Kid fought with us in Atlanta, saved our asses, and he's got no one else," Dean tells Bobby, flat, and that's the end of it. It's not like he thinks Theo's gonna be safe even if they get him back to Chitaqua. None of them are. Things are a little too far gone now for that. But there's still some pansy-ass part of him that was made to protect ( _or die in the attempt_ ) and just don't feel right otherwise.

They're on the highway before the day's out.

His baby purring under his palms, sun on his face, Cas riding shotgun … He could almost believe this is any other drive from _(before he knew how empty a city sounds with half its people dead)_ any other year.

Except Ellen's stretched out in the backseat with a gun in her lap, and stripped-bare wrecks of abandoned cars are dotted along the roadside like milestones. Almost all the gas stations and rest-stops they pass are burned out, boarded up, a hundred variants on _THE END IS NIGH_ and always, always, _CROATOAN_ scrawled on every surface. For almost two hours in Iowa the horizon smoulders, ash blown toward them on the sulphurous breeze. They have to take a detour through Missouri because a quarantine-wall topped with razor wire stops anyone from getting within twenty miles of Kansas City. There are ragged hitch-hikers every now and then, bloodied and filthy, and Dean doesn't hesitate, steps on the accelerator as they pass by.

It's dark by the time they get to Montana, and Dean's fading fast, lost in white line fever. He pulls over to let Cas take the wheel, Ellen vigilant with her Smith & Wesson in the passenger seat. Climbs into the backseat and crashes out, jacket pulled over his face. He sleeps longer and deeper, than he has for a month in Chitaqua. When he wakes, the sky is pale with dawn, Ellen's driving, and they've just crossed the Alabama state line.

Dean takes back over for the final leg of the journey, too tense to sit quiet and let someone else drive. About half an hour before they reach the co-ordinates Theo gave them, they pass a pyre-blackened pile of corpses.

The refugee camp's a huddled mass of tents in a field that's been trodden to bone dry red dust. It's ringed by a rickety chain-link fence that Dean reckons should probably delay any passing Croats by about two minutes.

A shack made of corrugated iron sheets crouches at the near corner of the field, beside what looks like the only gate. Inside sits a very sunburnt man in a very tired set of camouflage fatigues, with a little sign proclaiming him _Camp Superintendent._ As soon as he notices them heading over, he starts glaring.

"We're here to pick up a friend," Ellen says, brisk and no-nonsense. "Theo Hainault."

The guard stares at her blankly. "Never heard of him."

Dean rolls his eyes. This is gonna be a fucking _fun_ conversation. "Sixteen years old, black kid, skinny as hell, 'bout yea high?"

"He's from Atlanta, lost his family," Ellen adds, trying to tap into the guy's possibly non-existent sense of humanity.

The guy narrows his cold little eyes, looks them over, unimpressed. His gaze lingers on the thin Meg-scar that curls down the side of Dean's face. "Can't expect a man to keep track of all the fuckin' sob stories coming outta Atlanta."

"We'll find him. You gonna let us in or not?" Cas says. He sounds about this far from losing his temper and he's not alone. If he were still packing the angel juice, Dean'd be tempted to let him smite the bastard.

The guard sniffs, folds his arms. "Lemme see some ID."

 _Oh, for fuck's sake._ "How about this?" Dean holds up his gun, chrome blinding in the sunlight. "We just drove sixteen hours to take this kid off your hands, we don't need to prove shit to you. Let us the fuck in."

There's a long moment where they stare each other down. Then the guard breaks, cutting his gaze away and shrugging. "One of you. One of you goes in and it's your own funeral if you catch anything while you're in there."

And doesn't that sound promising? They look at each other, and by silent consensus, it's Ellen who steps forward, while Cas and Dean retreat to sit on the hood of the Impala and wait.

"This better not take too long," Dean says, half under his breath, half to himself. There are people milling around behind the fence, grimy fingers hooked through the chain-links, staring out with flat dead eyes. The air smells of sweat and filth and desperation. Makes his skin crawl. It feels too much like Hell. Like those weeks just after Cas ( _gripped him tight_ ) resurrected him and he still had one foot downstairs, couldn't help but see the Pit everywhere he looked, behind every face he saw.

Cas is watching him not-watch the refugees out the corners of his eyes. "We ought to help them. Not just Theo, all of them."

If Dean weren't so tightly wound, he'd laugh. It's been a while since Cas has said anything so obviously absurd. "Finding the Colt, ganking the Devil, _that_ 'll help 'em. Ain't nothing more we can do for the poor sons-of-bitches." He runs his hand over the gun that sits at his hip, reaches for a phrase beloved of his Dad, a phrase of his from _(Vietnam_ ) when Dean was fifteen and still thought they could save everyone. "They're collateral damage."

"What they areis _people_ , Dean." Cas is staring at him now, mouth drawn tight, squinting against disappointment and the early morning light. "Or aren't we in the business of _saving_ anymore?"

And that's a low fucking blow. So fucking low. "We've gotta stay focused," he says through his teeth. "Dammit, Cas, there's a bigger picture here."

Cas's tone is low but he's outright _glaring_. "You're the one not seeing clearly. We need to help these people, we have a _duty_ –"

That word, _duty_ , it just crystallises everything and suddenly Dean knows where the problem's coming from. Same place it always does, same old disconnect deep inside of Cas. He reaches out, gets a hand at the nape of Cas's neck, tight. "Look. _Look_. You're thinking like an angel, man. Thinking we can swoop in, save the day, all that shit – we can't. Okay? You're human, now, or near as dammit, so you better get used to failing people, because, buddy? That's all you're gonna do as a human. Same as the rest of us."

Cas jerks away from his touch, eyes sharp. His lips are a thin hard line, and Dean knows that look, knows this thing is gonna escalate, and that's exactly what he fucking needs right now –

"Boys! Hey, boys!" Ellen's voice makes them both start, and Dean reaches for his gun before he registers there's a grin in that voice. "Look what the cat dragged in."

"How the fuck you doing, kiddo?" Dean drags Theo into a loose headlock, gets elbowed in the ribs as the kid pulls his way out of it, grinning, and fist-bumps a bemused Cas.

"Man, it's good to see y'all again." Theo's eyes flash from Cas to Dean to the empty Impala, and he bites at his lip. "Is – Jo, is she –"

Ellen squeezes his shoulder, says, "She's fine. Keeping an eye on things up in Minnesota while we came down here, don't you worry." He tries to hide it, but the look of raw relief on the boy's face is obvious.

The douche of a superintendent is watching them, leaning out of his little corrugated-iron shelter, eyes shadowed. Between that and the restless blank stares from within the camp, it feels uncomfortably like they're being sized up, vultures circling. Dean opens the Impala's door, jerks his head towards the car. "C'mon. We'll get you up to speed on everything once we've put this place in the rearview."

The way Theo mutters an _amen_ and looks nervously back over his shoulder only confirms what Dean's gut's been telling him all along. He pulls out the moment the last door's slammed shut, puts his foot down. Sooner they're back at Chitaqua the better.

When the kid leans forward to talk to Cas, Dean gets a good look at him. Relief that they managed to find him rises like bile in his gullet. Theo was pretty skinny when they were backs-to-the-wall in Atlanta, but it was only teenage growth-spurt thinness. Now he's _gaunt_. He's wearing the same clothes he was the last time Dean saw him, sun-faded and grimy with red dirt and hanging off him.

"Y'all got anything to eat?" Theo asks when he's done explaining some argument he had about demons to Cas. He says it in this carefully-casual manner that Dean remembers from when _Sam_ was sixteen, the tone that meant he was ready to eat a fucking elephant - again - but trying to be subtle about it.

Dean meets Ellen's eye for a moment, nods. She hands the kid the corned-beef sandwiches that were supposed to be their lunch, and he inhales them – wilted as they are – in about half a minute flat.

"Woah, slow down. Don't think I won't kick you out and feed you to the Croats if you puke in my car," Dean warns him.

"Oh my God, you're so full of shit, old man," Theo says, sneering around a mouthful of sandwich.

"I'm sat next to a dude who's a bazillion years old and you're calling _me_ the old man?"

"It's because of the ancient car," Cas says helpfully.

That takes a moment to sink in, because you don't insult the car. The car is sacred, and Cas knows this, goddammit. "What – Cas, so help me, you're gonna be _walking_ back to Chitaqua."

"Whatever you say, oh fearless leader." There's something in Cas's voice that strikes Dean as wrong somehow, off-key, off-beat, and when he looks over to his right, Cas is smiling but his eyes are flinty cold.

It's on Dean's lips to ask what the fuck is wrong with him, but Ellen's shaking her head and grinning, Theo sprawled in the backseat, too thin and too hungry but alive and in one piece. The road is clear ahead of them, and all he wants is to chalk this one up as a win. They've been needing a win for so long.

Dean shakes his head, says nothing. He keeps his eyes on the road, lets Cas keep his resentments where he keeps his secrets.

* * *

It's about two weeks after the little jaunt down South to retrieve Theo that O'Neill and a few hollow-eyed Marines drop through Chitaqua. By this point there's no phone signal to be had, no internet, everything's running on the generator, and it's starting to sink in for the civilians that this is really it. The beginning of the end.

Bobby produces a bottle of half-decent rum, which the Marines demolish in short order under Ellen's watchful eye. Over a night-long game of Texas hold 'em, O'Neill catches Dean, Cas, Jo, Kate and Risa up on such news of the outside world as he has: Risa's parents and brother confirmed dead. Martial law following the virus into all fifty states. Towns and cities here and there holding out by enforcing quarantine. Total US fatalities chasing sixty million.

Dean takes the first few hands, a walk in the park ( _it's the principle of the thing)_ , but after about half an hour he catches Cas's eye and they start letting O'Neill win. Man looks half-dead, doesn't seem right to hustle him.

Before the Marines roll out the next morning, Dean triple-checks all their anti-demon protections for them, stocks them up on holy water. O'Neill leaves a note of the radio frequency they're using, a pair of armoured cars and several rifles they don't have the hands for anymore. Risa kisses her uncle's cheek goodbye, stands beside Dean and watches as he and his people clamber back into their battered cars and drive away. She doesn't shed a tear.

* * *

A few days later they're on the way back from their first serious supply run. Risa is ahead test-driving one of the armoured cars, Jaeger the other. The Impala's bringing up the rear, and looking at those tanks ahead? Dean can't help but think his girl may be gorgeous, but she's fragile as hell in comparison.

The nearest town's all but abandoned. Turns out ransacking stores in broad daylight is goddamn spooky. Just feels wrong. Dean's nerves ( _well-developed after years of five-finger discounts and breaking and entering_ ) were a-jangle the whole time, but the only trouble they ran into was when they disturbed a little pack of Croats, and that was only a five-minute job. Kate got a scratch on her elbow that's gotta sting like a bitch but doesn't even need stitches, and that's it. They were in and out in a couple hours.

"Okay, what about this one – streptomycin, heard of that?" Jo tosses a box up front to Cas, who catches it easily, holds it up so Dean can glance at the label.

Risa and Jaeger's cars are loaded up with canned food, canisters of gasoline, heavy-duty cleaning and sanitation supplies, your basic necessities. But since Theo came back from Alabama full of horror stories – typhoid fever, cholera, fucked-up new strains of flu, goddamn parasitic worms – they also raided the town clinic, making off with not just painkillers and antiseptics, but a bit of everything. Jo's sitting in the backseat, sorting through it all with Kate, who's looking a little flushed, little peaky ( _let it just be a cold or the normal flu and nothing crazy)_.

"Yeah, pretty sure that's some kinda antibiotic." It's maybe worrying that they're all they're going on here is what Dean's picked up from a couple decades playing field medic and spending too much time around shady backstreet doctors, but hell. What's the alternative? Not like Cas can magic everyone better. Not anymore.

"Do you actually know what any of these are for, or are we just gonna be playing trial and error if it comes to it?" Cas asks, squinting at the box mistrustfully.

Dean shrugs. "Fuck it, I spent twenty-odd years killing things by the method of _throw shit at the wall and see what sticks_ , and I ain't dead yet."

"You fill me with confidence," Cas deadpans, and Dean's rolling his eyes in retort, trying for some snappy comeback, when it happens.

From the backseat behind them, there's an unholy scream, guttural and ragged – sickeningly familiar from Redruth, from Atlanta, a _Croat_ scream – and a blur of sudden motion as Kate launches herself forward. Then there are gunshots, three of them, the reports deafening, and glass shattering and blood on the windshield and Cas yelling and they're rounding a corner and Dean has his foot to the floor, bringing them to a rubber-burning screeching halt.

A halt inches – _inches_ – from the edge of the road and a fucking sheer drop down the mountainside.

For a moment there's silence. "Christ," he breathes, knuckles white on the steering wheel, cold with sweat. "Jesus Christ."

Jo opens her door and practically falls out of the car. Drops her handgun on the ground, staggers about two paces and collapses to throw up. Cas is right after her, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her upright, while Dean runs around to their side of the car. "What happened, what the fuck happened?" Cas is saying, eyes too-wide, voice too-loud.

"She just." Jo passes a hand down over her bloodied face. "She just turned. She came right at me, her eyes were all –" She breaks off to double over and retch again.

That fever Kate had. Fuck. _Fuck._ Should have known. Dean doesn't have a hell of a lot of experience with Croats _before_ the bastards turn ( _always too late for that_ ), but, fuck, they should have known.

If Jo's reflexes had been even a little slower, if she hadn't been holding her gun, if Dean had braked the car a little later –

"Did she get you?" Cas asks, and Jo doesn't answer, eyes pressed shut, hand tangled in her hair. He grabs at her arm again. "Jo –"

She shoves away, staggers backwards, voice rising wildly. "No, she didn't fucking _get_ me, Cas, I _shot_ her before she could, okay? Okay?"

Dean gets in between her and Cas, holds out his hands, placating. "Okay. Jo, okay." She looks at him, eyes showing white all around, and sits down heavily, more a collapse than anything else. There's gore spattered all over her face, down her arms. Little chunks of what Dean thinks is brain matter hang in her hair. A piece of scalp caught on her shirt, hair still attached.

Christ. The car is going to be a _disaster_.

And she is. The rear window on the driver's side is completely shattered, and one of the bullets tore a hole clean through the door, and that's not even counting the body. The Impala's seen a _lot_ but this? This is something else. Even the time Azazel tore Dean's insides to shreds doesn't come close to matching the mess that's left of Kate Weiss after three bullets through her skull at point-blank range. Blood everywhere. Skin. Brain. Pieces of bone stuck to the seats.

"Jesus Christ," he says again. "What the hell are we going to do with that body? Jesus _fucking_ Christ."

"Stop saying that," Cas snaps.

"Jesus Christ," Dean repeats. He turns to Cas, standing behind him, jaw clenched and face rigid. "Come on, man, help me get it out the car."

Cas gives him this _look_ , head tilted and eyes dark, like Dean just said something impossibly disappointing, and really, he does not have the patience for this. "We should take her back –"

Jo breaks in, shrill with strain, "Guys, I am _not_ fucking riding in the car with that, okay? I'll walk all the way home if I gotta, I don't care."

It's a pretty reasonable objection as far as Dean's concerned – it's a hot day, and they've still got a good hour's drive ahead of them, and that ain't gonna smell great – but Cas seems to think otherwise, says reprovingly, "She deserves a proper funeral. We need to take her home."

Oh, for crying out loud. "And her little girls? You think they need to see _that_?" He jerks his head toward the car, the shattered body. "Just help me get it out, we'll salt-and-burn her here, alright?"

Cas's gaze flicks from the corpse to Dean and back again, and he steps in closer. Says, very softly, "Dean. We don't have any gloves."

And, yeah, shit. _Shit_. This just keeps on getting better. A bite's the surest way of catching Croatoan, but it's not the only way, as Kate herself is a prime ( _not exactly living and breathing_ ) example. Dean figures getting their bodily fluids in your blood is the dealbreaker, but since no-one's gotten around to applying the goddamn scientific method to the thing, no-one knows quite what it takes.

As if handling dead bodies wasn't fun enough already.

Dean swallows, smacks Cas's shoulder, does his best to project calm. "Well, that's a chance we're just gonna have to take. There's a tarp in the trunk, we'll wrap it in that. Only took Kate, what, hour and a half to turn, so we deal with the body, wait a couple hours, drive back. No problemo."

And Cas gives him one of his all-time best _I-can't-fucking-believe-you_ stares, but he sucks it up, takes Kate's body by the feet when Dean takes the shoulders. Even in a long career of examining bodies and dropping plenty of his own, this would make the highlight reel of the most unpleasant of the lot.

They drag the body off to the side of the road, scatter salt over it, douse it in gasoline. Dean strikes a match, lets it fall. Remembers doing this for his father, what feels like a lifetime ago, his brother shaking with tears beside him.

He doesn't say anything. Neither does Cas, neither does Jo. They'd only known Kate Weiss a few months, but she'd fought beside them, stood with them, trusted them with her daughters' lives. She was a friend.

He wonders how many more friends he'll have to salt-and-burn before ( _he kills Sam_ ) this is over.

* * *

Emma, the older of Kate Weiss's two daughters, she takes it hard at first. Cries and cries and cries, but a couple days later she's up and at 'em again, following Ellen everywhere, pestering Bobby to teach her about demons, shooting at tin cans with manic intensity. The younger one, Rachael, six years old, all curls and dimples, she doesn't cry. Doesn't speak, either. Latches on to Dean for some reason, trails round after him like a tiny shadow.

It doesn't worry him, her silence, not the way it does Ellen, or Bobby. He's been there himself, after all, knows she'll get through it. Kids are a hell of a lot tougher than people give them credit for, when they have to be.

When they get back to Chitaqua, it's pretty clear to Dean that the Impala's done. Reached the end of her life. She's had a damn good innings, and he loves her, he does, but at this point he's gotta concede that between the bullet-holes and the blood, it's not worth it. Best just to strip her down, use the parts for the cars with 4x4 drive and armoured bodies and fuel efficiencies that don't make him want to weep.

Rachael sits on a crate and watches as he works on the car. Hands him tools or a drink when he asks her to. Every now and then, he'll find something that jogs his memory – a green army man, a postcard from Las Vegas, a Polaroid Jo took of him and Cas knee-deep in snow on a wendigo hunt in freaking Canada – and tell her a story. It's kinda nice, in a way.

He's digging through the crap under the passenger side of the backseat, already unearthed an ancient Led Zep t-shirt he thought he'd lost, an unopened prescription bottle of amphetamine pills, and a pair of silver bullets, when he finds it. The moment his fingers close around cool metal, he recognises it. It's been getting on for three years, but he wore the damn thing for nearly twenty, knows it like ( _his brother's face_ ) the back of his hand.

When did it find its way under here? He remembers Cas taking it when he went off on his wild God chase, remembers Cas abandoning that scheme before Sam said _yes_ , but Cas giving it back? Dean losing it in the Impala? He can't remember.

The carved brass head dangles on its leather cord from his fingers, gleams in the sun. Sam gave it to him, that Christmas long ago, and for twenty years he wore it. Wore it when Sam ran away to Stanford, when Dad told him he had to save his brother or kill him, when he sold his soul, when he died, when he came back, when he watched Sam fuck that demon bitch and drink her blood and open Lucifer's Cage and he did _nothing_.

Should have listened to Dad. Should have fucking listened to his Dad.

Rachael reaches out, child-chubby hands brushing the amulet's horns. She looks up at him, inquisitive, expecting an explanation, another story.

Dean yanks it back, out of her reach. "It's nothing," he says, and throws it away, hard as he can.

* * *

Stripping the Impala down is somehow therapeutic. Calming. When Dean's done with her, he turns his attention to the other cars: the two the Marines gave them, the pick-up truck that used to be Kate's, Risa's Jeep, and the three decent ones of the assortment belonging to the Chitaqua folks. Cars are something he knows, something that hasn't changed, something he can _fix_.

Also, disappearing underneath one for most of the day gives him a bit of a break from everyone hovering around him, looking at him like he's got the answers to everything.

It really started when the generator broke down, a few weeks after they arrived at Chitaqua, and Dean figured it couldn't be that hard, rolled up his sleeves and had it working again by the end of the day. You'd think he'd pulled some honest-to-God miracle out his ass. And that was that, Dean became the man in charge, buck stops here. Which is fine on a hunt, in a battle, but this? It's starting to make him understand why Bobby's so perpetually grumpy with all the hunters who treat him like thefount of all bizarro knowledge.

So, yeah. The cars are kind of a sanity saver.

"What are you even doing with them?" Theo asks him, late afternoon one day. Ellen got sick of him lurking round her kitchen and kicked him out, so for a couple of hours he's been sitting next to Rachael, eating peanuts and watching Dean.

Kid's a handful, by turns clingy, always underfoot, and prickly, prone to erratic outbursts of temper. Not that Dean's surprised – he's lived with sixteen year-old boys before, knows how to handle them. You accept that nothing you can do will stop them from eating you out of house and home, or from being angry as hell for no good reason, and let it roll right off your back.

Dean's got the hood of the pick-up truck popped, his head buried under it. He's been at it for hours, hands filthy with oil and back aching, but it's a good ache. "I'm just …" He trails off, biting his lip, lost in thought. "Rach, pass me that wrench? Thanks, kiddo."

Behind them, wheels crunch on gravel. Bobby. "Ellen sent me to tell y'all grub's about up. Dean, you've been under the hood of that thing for three days, what are you _doing_ to it, you idjit?"

"I'm trying to modify the engine so she can run on biofuel – y'know, like vegetable oil. Save us a he –a heck of a lot of gasoline." Last anyone heard from the Middle East, it was raining black ichor while the civil wars raged. Between that and the whole Croat situation, gasoline'll be like gold dust in no time.

There's what seems like an awful long pause, which makes him kinda uneasy, given neither Bobby nor Theo are exactly known for keeping their opinions to themselves. "What?"

Theo says slowly, "I can't tell if you're a genius or fucking insane."

"Watch your mouth in front of the young 'un," Bobby snaps, as Dean tosses a spare bolt admonishingly in Theo's general direction. Then, in a tone somewhere between fond and exasperated, "Bit of both, same's his whole family."

And isn't _that_ a mixed blessing? Never live up to his father, never live down to his brother, and he'll never put either of those ghosts to rest till the day he _(kills Sam_ ) dies. Dean wrenches a bolt loose with more force than strictly necessary, throws it on the floor.

Bobby says, placating, "Now, gonna come get something to eat, huh?"

Dean steps back, out from under the hood. Behind Bobby he can see the bit of field where they light the campfire in the evenings, the collection of benches and picnic tables where they sit to eat and shoot the shit, drink and play cards and pretend the world isn't falling to pieces around them. Ellen's minding what looks like a huge pot of stew, Jo leaning on the table, chatting to Risa, her blonde hair a halo in the light of the low sun. Cas is sitting on a bench, Pippa and Lana – two of the civilian chicks who were here when they arrived – on either side of him. His head's tipped back, gazing up at _(heaven_ ) the sky as he talks, and they're both watching him with absolutely rapt intention.

Rotating his shoulders, trying to get the ache out, Dean says, "Nah, I'm not hungry yet, I'll grab some leftovers after." Bobby gives him a narrow look, but before the man can say anything, he turns to Rachael. "You go along with Theo, now, sweetheart. I'm gonna stay out here a bit."

The little girl nods, and Theo takes her hand, mock-salutes Dean, leads her away. Bobby gives him that look again, but Dean turns back to the car pointedly. He sighs, and then wheels off.

It's getting dark by the time Cas sidles over, leans against the Jeep parked next to the truck Dean's working on. He whistles softly, twice on the same note, Dean’s signal. "Wasn't it you who tried to tell me how important it is to eat regularly?"

"Just didn't feel like it," Dean says. Tries to keep it sounding casual, light.

"Dean," Cas says, and that's all.

Fuck it. Fuck it, there's no point, Cas has always seen right through all his bullshit. Dean sighs heavily, stands up, facing Cas, wiping his hands off with a rag. "I just couldn't be fucked with all your – all the –" He waves a hand vaguely at the campfire, looks away, hopes it's too dark to tell he's flushing.

Cas is holding a bowl of stew which he pushes at Dean. He takes it because it's not worth fighting over, and after a lifetime of shitty diners and greasy fast food he's willing to declare Ellen a culinary goddess. "They know I'm an – they know what I used to be. They're only curious."

"Yeah, I know." Doesn't mean he has to like it. And maybe Cas thinks it's _only_ _curiosity_ , maybe he still can't read people that well, but to Dean it's pretty goddamn obvious. And that, he _definitely_ doesn't have to like.

He ducks his head, has a few spoonfuls of the stew. Still warm. Looks at Cas, rumpled hair and torn jeans, face soft in the half-light. Remembers Castiel. Remembers when he used to believe angels were some great incorruptible force of destiny. "Do they know it's not like you make it sound?" he asks Cas, conversational. "That you're just as fucked-up, just as lost as I am, and if you say you ain't, it's bullshit?"

Cas half-laughs, shaking his head. Stuffs his hands in his jeans pockets ( _human, so human now_ ), shrugs. "If it helps them, does it matter?"

Dean wants to say _well yeah, it kind of does,_ cuz he's lived all his life knowing the truth goddamn hurts, will kill you in the night, but is a sight better than the alternative. But, fuck. He's also lived all his life knowing that sometimes you gotta go over people's heads, make shitty calls, for their own good. And yeah, it leaves a sour taste in his mouth, but you do what you gotta.

He lifts a shoulder, quirks a smile at Cas. "Well, so long's they're clear on you being a freak …"

Cas reaches over to smack him upside the head, smirking his _wait-till-later_ smirk. "Eat your food, Dean."

* * *

Late August, they get visited by a bunch of Marines. Not O'Neill's crew, a raggedy lot of strangers.

They're battle-scarred, half of them walking wounded, uniforms filthy and hanging off them – but tough as all hell. Their commander's a guy named Garrett, who uses his belt to keep a running tally of Croats he's dropped, more notch than belt by this point. He fought at Atlanta, apparently, and greets Dean and Cas and Jo like they're old friends, like they actually fought _together_. That's an old John Winchester trick when running a con, and it has Dean's guard up right away. Garrett ain't no Kenneth O'Neill _(nor John Winchester_ ), that's for sure.

Turns out, the Marines are hurting for gasoline. Dean's just managed to get the pick-up truck and one of the armoured cars up and running on biofuel, starting work on the others, and the look on Garrett's face when the man sees the size of their gas stockpile is sweet, _sweet_ vindication. Oughta show everyone who thought he was crazy.

The bartering is tense as fuck. Tense as things only are between people who don't trust each other an inch but are trying to pretend they're on the same side _(Dean and Sam, that last year after Hell_ ). Ellen handles Chitaqua's side of it, Dean backing her up when Garrett gets all patronising, while Jo sits behind them casually twirling her angel-knife, and Cas stares the Marines down.

In the end they swap a few barrels of gasoline and a job-lot of Theo's home-drawn anti-possession tattoos for a load of the Marines' rations, several boxes of ammunition, three pairs of spare combat boots, and a crate of booze ( _priorities, priorities_ ). Both sides feel kinda ripped off, but there've definitely been worse deals made.

When the haggling's done their guests fall on Ellen and Ted's gigantic vat of chili like a horde of locusts. As the sun sinks down behind the mountains, the playing cards come out for round after round of poker by firelight. It could feel idyllic if Dean wasn't playing with an orphaned six-year-old leaning half-asleep against his side. If the yarns they all of them tell, back and forth, weren't all war stories: Atlanta and Chicago, demons and Croats.

Mostly the tales are told with a grim smirk – the half-blinded Marine who's giving Dean and Cas a tough game has a real hangman's sense of humour – but through all of them Garrett grins broad, his laugh warm and genuine. His eyes have the fever-bright look Dean saw in certain hunters he's known. The ones in whom the joy of the hunt crept too deep in their blood, till they loved it not for the thrill of the chase, of victory, but for the thrill of the kill itself. _Men like that_ , his Dad always said, _they're handy in a fight, but don't you ever trust 'em outside of it_.

The man with the burn-scar drooping one eye is good enough that Dean doesn't have to throw the hands he loses, but even so he and Cas ( _all half-glances and the tiniest of gestures_ ) take the Marines for all they've got. Jo's having a hard time keeping her face straight after her second beer. There's a reason they don't bring that girl in on the hustling, no subtlety at all.

Soon enough, it's full-dark, and when he leans forward to deal the cards, Rachael lists to the side. She only doesn't fall right off the bench because Dean's reflexes are good enough that he catches her.

"Jo, you deal. I'm gonna take care of this one." The little girl stirs slightly as he picks her up, hangs onto his jacket, but doesn't wake. It's a short walk through the camp to the small cabin she's sharing with her sister, between Ted's and Bobby and Ellen's, and the kid's skinny, barely weighs a thing.

Dean's quiet as he slips through the door, deposits Rachael, an unresisting ragdoll, on the empty bed, but he still wakes Emma. The eleven-year-old sits up in the other bed, small face a pale oval in the gloom. "Is she okay?" she whispers.

"Just tired." He looks from the one to the other, parentless children at the end of the world. Swallows. "Look after your sister, now."

"I always do," Emma hisses, defensive, and he knows there's nothing he can say to that. He nods, backs out, closes the door on the memory of two boys, younger even than those two girls, who used to sleep alone too.

His mood's sour ( _remembering always does that, nothing good ever came of it_ ) as he heads back toward the fire and the poker game, and that's even before Garrett pops up out of the dark and grabs his arm. Son-of-a-bitch is lucky he doesn't get a knife in the gut for his trouble, shit.

"What d'you want?" Dean snaps, pulling away.

The man grins, teeth flashing. "Hey, just wanted a word. Hear if I had a question 'bout demons, you're the man to tap?"

Dean shrugs, noncommittal. Wonders who's been telling tales out of school, what this guy knows. "Try me."

"Well – we were in Detroit a while back, hell of a lot of black-eyed motherfuckers, pardon the pun. Anyways, we got caught between two groups of 'em, looked like we were done for, but fucked if they didn't start killing _each other_. What d'you make of that?"

"It don't surprise me." People believe demons are united because they've never seen Hell, never _lived_ Hell, where you drink nothing but betrayal and eat nothing but revenge and learn soon enough to love it. Dean's been there, done that, seen demons trueformed and in their natural habitat. Ain't no power in the universe could keep them all playing nice together, not even _(Sam_ ) Lucifer.

"See, what I was thinking was this." Garrett sidles closer, grabs at Dean's arm again. "We can use that. Divide and conquer. We work with some of them, use them to get at their leader – the man in white, you know? – maybe they'll even keep the Croats off of our backs. See, my boys, they're scared of 'em, don't wanna think about it, but you –"

Dean yanks his arm back, gives him a hard shove. "No. _No_ , you fucking idiot." The light from the ( _Pit-fires_ ) bonfire flickers over Garrett's face, and Dean wonders how long the bastard would hold out if he made some deal, went downstairs. Something tells Dean ( _always could see it in the eyes when they're ready to break_ ) it wouldn't take that much. Garrett'd be up off of the rack at the first time of asking. "You don't work with demons.And you don’t know _shit_ about the man in white. Stick your nose into all of that, you’ll deserve what you get."

He spits to the side, stalks off back to the fire and the poker game. He and Cas win the next seven hands, candy from a baby, and there's no satisfaction in it at all.

* * *

When Garrett and his people head out the next day, it's with the casually thrown-out news that _oh, did we tell you, that O'Neill guy, he and his gang got wiped out trying to hold the California state line. Well, shit happens, so long_.

It's just the news of one more set of casualties among millions, but it casts a shadow over the camp.

Risa vanishes for most of the day ( _doesn't want anyone to see her cry_ ), and Theo's in one of his worse moods, has a screaming match with Ellen that Jo has to break up, and Dean can't settle to anything. Everything keeps going wrong when he's working on the cars and cleaning the weaponry doesn't quiet his mind and if one more person asks him some stupid question he's gonna scream. If she weren't on bricks, he'd climb in the Impala and drive off the edge of the fucking world.

They're eating round the fire in steely silence when Cas appears with a bottle of absinthe and a crooked half-smile. "From our esteemed friends," he says.

"Cas, you are a fucking _genius_ ," Dean tells him, because, yeah, this is what they need. It's been too long. Entirely too goddamned long since he got drunk, seriously drunk, drunk enough to lose himself in it.

Ellen sends the kids to bed, and they all get down to business.

Doesn't take long – or at least, doesn't _seem_ to, time gets kinda funny when you drink nothing but shots, one after another, till your throat just don't stop burning. Fuckin' absinthe. Least it's better than the stuff he and Sam were on, that one time in Vegas ( _anniversary of Mom's death and Jess's and Dean's deal halfway due_ ), and fuck that'd hurt the next morning. Still, gets the job done, absinthe. Nothing like it.

At some point Risa starts crying, real ugly crying, and Jo puts an arm around her shoulders, strokes her hair, wanders off with her into the dark. Theo looks like he's been hit by a two-by-four, which is kinda hilarious even given circumstances. Barking up the wrong tree with that little crush, poor kid.

It starts raining, and somehow ( _details get a little fuzzy_ ) they end up in the cabin, his-and-Cas's cabin. Dean propped up against the headboard, Cas sitting between his legs, hair spiky with damp, pontificating about something or other, Lana sprawled out on her stomach at the end of the bed, gazing at him heavy-lidded.

Cas is talking shit about angels, some _collective conscious_ bullshit, whatever the fuck, but he's also watching the girl. Watching her while she watches him. And Dean's drunk as hell, but he knows where this is going, oh yeah. He knows.

When Lana gets up on her hands and knees, crawls catlike toward them, Cas twists to look at Dean. There are points of colour high in his cheeks, hair a crazy mess, eyes huge and blue-burning. He looks gorgeous, looks hungry, looks nothing like _Castiel_ , nothing, and he's looking at Dean.

Well, what the fuck. It's the end of the world. Dean lifts his chin, a challenge: _show me what you got_.

And Cas leans forward, holds Lana's face between his hands, kisses her deep, deep. And _she's_ all rich brown curls and curves and creamy-soft skin, and _he's_ all dark hair and stubble and sharp angles, and together they make one hell of a pretty picture, fuck. There's something coiled at the pit of his stomach, bitter and uneasy, but it's so much simpler to ignore it, let the absinthe haze slide over him and enjoy the show.

Then Lana pulls away, kneels up and leans past Cas to press her lips to Dean's. She tastes like the booze, like Cas, and it's been so long, God, so long ( _before Sam said_ yes) since he kissed a girl. A hand in her long hair, and she pushes into him, and when Cas lets out this little moan of appreciation, Dean _feels_ it. His hand clutches Dean's hip tight.

It's almost too much – but Lana breaks the kiss, sits back again, smirking. She's got blue eyes, too, but they haven't got that space-deep stillness to them ( _not that Cas's have, either, not these days_ ). "Your turn, boys," she says, breathy.

Cas raises his eyebrows, grins slow. And, well, can't be anything anyone hasn't worked out already, and tonight's an _oh-fuck-it_ night if ever there was one. Dean gets him by the collar, tugs him in, and they kiss lazy and alcohol-loose, Lana right _there_ , pressing into the both of them, and there's still something jittery inside him, but God, this is amazing.

Cas pulls back, squeezes his hip, fingers brushing over the stripe of bare skin above his jeans. He smiles at Dean, face alight with that ( _desperation_ ) hunger, licks his lips, turns to Lana, who wraps her arms around him like she's drowning and he's her lifeline. And Cas kisses back like he _is_.

For a moment, through the numbing fog of alcohol, Dean thinks he doesn't recognise Cas at all.

* * *

The next morning's predictable _what-the-hell-even-happened-last-night_ daze unnerves Dean more than he dares let on. He's no stranger to hangovers, to piecing events together from the hickeys and the clothes strewn on the floor – but not lately. Not when they could have been overrun with Croats at any moment while he couldn't see ( _shoot_ ) straight.

What the fuck were they all thinking? Him and Cas and Jo and Risa all out for the count, that's the camp's four best shots, best fighters, all down. That ain't never happening again, for damn sure.

It freaks him out enough to send him out to the south-east edge of the camp, where Jaeger set up a load of tin cans for a shooting gallery. He hasn't done target practice in a long time ( _don't need to shoot at cans when Croats are a dime a dozen_ ) but it's reassuring. Familiar.

Cas and Jo show up a little later, both looking worse for wear. Practically the first day they arrived at Chitaqua, Jo had a target painted on a couple of the trees so they could compete at knife-throwing. Neither of them are quite up to their usual standards today, but they're still good enough that Rachael, sitting cross-legged in the mud by Dean's feet, watches with saucer-wide eyes.

And that gives Dean an idea. "Rach, you want me to teach you to shoot?"

She's on her feet in an instant, nodding vigorously, all childish enthusiasm. Actually smiling, and everything. Ought to have done this weeks ago.

He picks out his lightest pistol, gives her the _never point at anything you don't want to shoot, keep your finger off the trigger until you're shooting_ run-down. Stands behind her, one hand at her elbow, the other at her back to brace her against the recoil.

First shot hits the tin can dead centre. "Well, just look at that. You're a natural just like your sister." Rachael beams up at him, then scrunches her little face up to take aim again. "Right, we're gonna go for that one on the left – look down your sights, that's right."

Another shot – not the bulls-eye, but still on-target. Then – "Dean!"

It's Ellen, behind them, glaring something fierce. "Just a minute, kiddo. Put the safety on – yup, there you go." He jogs over to Ellen, rubbing his hands off on his jeans. "What's up?"

He's expecting some gripe or other about one of the civilians, or at worst, maybe the generator failing again. Certainly not a hiss of, "Have you got Rachael Weiss _shooting_?"

"Well, yeah, obviously." Ellen's glare intensifies, and he rolls his eyes. She'd wrap everyone up in cotton wool if she could, even _Dean_. "She's a bright girl, she won't blow her head off by accident. Come on, I could shoot when _I_ was six."

Ellen's lips thin. "Huh, well, far be it from me to criticise your daddy –"

"Damn straight." There's bad blood there, and he understands that, he does. But he's sure as hell not gonna listen to a lecture on the shortcomings of John Winchester from someone who didn't even really know the man. "Like it or not, Ellen, it's the Apocalypse and she's gotta know these things, that's all there is to it."

She looks at him and must see he ain't kidding. She just shakes her head, throws her hands up and stalks off, giving him this _look_ , mouth down-turned, eyes dark. Well, she's just gonna have to deal with it, because gone are the days Ellen Harvelle's disappointed-mother looks could hit him in the heart.

Dean goes back to Rachael, ruffles her hair a little in greeting. Thinks for a moment of ( _his son_ ) Ben Braeden, of eating cake at his birthday party and praying he'd never have to fire a gun.

Wherever that kid is, if he's alive, Dean sure as hell hopes someone's taught him to shoot.

"Okay, Rach, let's go again. That one at the end. Safety – sight – good girl."


	7. Made Of Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two nights ago, the last of his angel's Grace left them, once and for all. Today, a broken Prophet walks in through his gate. Fate has the sickest sense of humour.

_'There's bullet holes where my compassion used to be, and there is violence in my heart.'_

* * *

Bobby catches the mayday call over the ancient transceiver radio: _Army, trying to hold Stafford, North Dakota, in urgent need of back-up_.

Stafford's a three-hour drive from Chitaqua, tops, and it's a small town. Not some big city where they'll get hemmed in and bogged down with no retreat possible ( _he learnt the lessons of Atlanta hard_ ). The decision is barely a decision, and Dean sees it reflected back at him in the fierce gleam of Jo's eyes, the set of Cas's jaw.

"Tell 'em we're coming," Dean says.

As they leave, Bobby orders them to be careful, part-pride, part-concern, part-jealousy, the way he has every time they've headed out on a job since he lost the use of his legs. Tells them if they die he'll kill them. Cas laughs, and Jo kisses his cheek, says, _See you on the other side_ , and Dean throws up a mock-salute, and off they go. Time to round up the troops.

Ellen goes, of course, wouldn't dream of being left behind, and Risa, then Ted and Jaeger, and Pete, who never hunted anything but deer before but is damned good at that ( _four legs, two legs, ain't no different)_. Theo wants to come and when Dean tells him _hell no,_ he throws an absolute shit-fit, like that's gonna make his case. As they drive off in the armoured cars, Dean watches him in the rearview, sitting sulking in the mud with his arm around Rachael and a shotgun at his side. Thinks, _yeah._

Every time, every hunt, you've gotta plan things out like it's gonna be your last. Gotta know there's someone there to take over, if this one's the one.

It's mid-September, the weather and the leaves just on the cusp of changing, and how long's it been since the last proper job? Last time he drove out to do something more than just loot a few abandoned stores?

In the backseat Jo is grinning, flinty-bright, as she checks and loads up all the guns. Beside Dean, Cas is still, quiet, but it's his old old battle-quiet ( _not the new drunken-quiet)_ , solid and familiar and reassuring. There's no music, but Dean drums his fingers on the wheel to the rhythm of Zep's _When The Levee Breaks_ ashis blood begins to hum.

This time around, they get to be the cavalry.

There's a huddle of survivors at the outskirts of Stafford with a clutch of battered soldiers guarding them and fuck only knows how many Croats left lurking in the shelter of the streets. Dean leaves Pete and some extra ammunition behind to shore them up, takes the others off on a sweep of the town.

"Fifth of whiskey says I gank more than you," Jo mutters to him as they head out. No matter what the hunt, she just has to fuck with him. It's like a law of physics.

"Focus, Harvelle." The bandana masking his face hides the smirk he can’t quite keep from his lips, but her eyes flash and he knows she heard it in his voice.

Short of burning the place down, sweeping a town like this - pacing slow and methodical from one block to the next, hollering _here, here, come get us,_ to draw the things out - is the only way to clear a Croat infestation. Back before Croatoan kicked into high gear and tore through the East Coast from Portland to Washington, Dean and Cas and Jo and Ellen perfected the technique a dozen times over across small-town America. And it's not that he misses it, he doesn't, it's just that this? This is _pure_.

Walking the streets, finger to the trigger, Cas silent and intent to his left, Jo swift and fierce to his right, he can let everything else sink away. There's no conscious thought, no slow grind of doubts, none of the thousand-and-one tiny judgement calls ( _cuz apparently nothing ever gets done without his say-so)_ that make up each day at Chitaqua – just this. Running on nothing but the instincts of a lifetime spent in the hunt. Kill or be killed. What he was born for.

It's been too fucking long since things were this simple.

About an hour into the sweep, they hit a nest of Croats in the town's elementary school. Really, with no demons about to pull their mind-whammies, it's as easy a hunt as you're ever gonna get. The brainless fuckers just hear footsteps and charge. There's a fair few of 'em, though, and for a moment it looks like they might be about to get overrun, sheer weight of numbers compensating for what the Croats lack in tactics and weaponry. But hell, that's what assault rifles are for. More bang for your buck.

When there's a break – when no more virus-mad zombies have come running out the building for a while – Dean rubs at his eyes, rotates his shoulders. "Right, we need to check that school, make sure there's no more Croats waiting on us, no survivors either. Cas, Jo, with me – Ellen, you guys watch our backs. We good?"

He casts a quick glance over his shoulder, expecting nothing beyond a _yeah-fine_ nod or two. What he _sees_ is Ted sitting on the ground in a heap. The scarf that should be tied over his nose and mouth is pulled down around his neck, exposing a face gone slack and ashen. Jaeger is gripping his shoulder, looking distinctly green around the gills. "What's the matter, did you two – did those two get got, or what?" That last, he directs at Ellen, who shakes her head and says nothing.

"No, no, we didn't," Ted says. His voice is about an octave higher than normal. "Just – I – all those, those Croats, I mean, half of them were _kids_ , man! _Jesus._ "

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Jo mutters under her breath. Dean snorts an agreement.

Maybe he should've brought Theo along after all. Kid might be high strung, but at least he gets this shit, won't bug out on them after ganking a few Croats that just happen to be under five feet tall. He saw his kid sister ripping throats out, saw Cas shoot her, he knows the score.

"Fine. Change of plan. Ellen, take these delicate flowers back to base camp, I can't be worrying about them fainting on us while I'm trying to get the job done." Ellen's eyes narrow like she might be about to get on his case about _empathy_ or _tact_ or some shit, but he ignores it, turns away. "Risa, you and Jo stay here and watch our backs, me and Cas'll check the building." He kicks lightly at Cas's foot. "C'mon, man."

He doesn't look back. Picks his way over and between the dead Croats, Cas following a pace or two behind, then in through the school's torn-off front door, and they get on with it.

It's just Cas-and-Dean, and that doesn't work quite so well, feel quite so safe, as when it's Cas-and-Dean-and-Jo, but it's still good. The sense of being wholly in tune, that absolute awareness of where he is, taking corners and knowing he's covering you, needing nothing more than nudges of feet and shoulders and the briefest of gestures to stand in for whole conversations – it's good. This is what Dean was made for, and it's what Cas was made for, too, and never do they understand each other more than they do like this.

There is one man in the school building still alive, but he's got a hole torn in his stomach and bite-marks in his shoulder, so one way or the other it's only a matter of time. The bullet's a mercy, really.

Back out to Jo and Risa and on they go. Risa's on edge, fidgeting with her bandana frenetically, but she doesn't waver. Steels herself and rolls with the occasional Croat ambushes and the not-so-occasional piles of stinking corpses like a pro.

The elementary school is by far the worst Stafford has to throw at them. A couple of hours later and they're circling back to where they started, where they left the pathetic remnants of the townspeople and of the men the Army sent to protect them.

No sooner do they get there than Dean's waylaid by a pair of the more in-one-piece soldiers. Seems that the unit's officers all got killed when the shit hit the fan with the Croats earlier, leaving them with no one in charge and no one stepping up to take charge, and therefore defaulting ( _of course_ ) to Dean. Ellen appears, grim-faced, pulls Jo and Cas to one side, leaving Dean and Risa to deal with the headless-chicken soldiers.

The two men go on about conflicting orders, and what to do with the civilians ( _angling for Dean's crew to take them on, hah)_ , and injuries and no field medics, talking over each other half the time, and Dean just lets them run their mouths, nods along. Hopes Risa's gonna come up with some excuse as to why they sure ain't taking umpteen more hungry mouths back with them to Chitaqua, because otherwise he'll just tell them to get fucked and to hell with diplomacy. There's a goddamn war on, he's got too much dead weight to carry as is, and a bigger picture to think of.

"And we're nearly out of gasoline," the one guy says, and apparently they've also run out of either complaints or stamina because they finally shut up and look at Dean, expectant.

It's on the tip of his tongue to tell them _not my circus, not my motherfucking monkey_ , when Jo's there by his side, tugging at his jacket. At his questioning look, she grimaces, makes a motion with her hand as though cocking a pistol. The signal for _we-got-a-situation-here._

Awesome. "'Scuse me," Dean says shortly, and follows Jo, leaving Risa to deal with panicking soldiers. Good luck to her.

Jo leads him over to Ellen, to Cas. Both of them have pulled down their makeshift masks.  Ellen's agitated, eyes reddened, one hand twisted in her hair, the other rubbing at her mouth. And Cas is – well, he's Cas, drawn back out from wherever it is he retreats to when he gets all ( _angelic)_ Zen during a heavy job. He meets Dean's gaze for a moment, glances away, mouth working a little. And this really, really, does not feel good. There's a shoe about to drop and Dean knows it –

In an undertone, Ellen says, "One of the kids was bitten. The boy in the red jacket behind me. The Army boys, they weren't sure, thought maybe he wouldn't turn, but I took a gander, and it's a Croat bite, that's for damn sure."

Back in the early days of Croatoan, when they were still trying to salt and burn the vics before moving on, they all saw too many ragged bite-marks on pallid corpses for Ellen to mistake one for anything else. A human's bite is as distinctive as a dog's or a lamia's or a chupacabra's if you know what to look for.

There's a margin of error when it comes to the indirect ways of catching the virus – getting scratched, getting their blood in your mouth or on your skin unless you've got an open wound – but a bite? Do not pass go, do not collect $200. That's that.

Dean glances up over Ellen's shoulder, sees the kid she means right away. Red hunting jacket, mop of dark hair, maybe eight or nine years old, face sweaty and flushed beneath streaks of dirt. Looks feverish. The way Kate Weiss looked before she tried to tear Jo apart.

"Yeah, kid's gonna turn alright," he says, hand sliding to check the handgun in its holster at his thigh. Turns to Cas, doesn't bother to keep the edge from his voice. "And you couldn't take care of this because – ?"

Cas looks at him for a moment, mouth twisting up into a half-smile. Then his eyes skitter away and he lifts a shoulder. "Thought I'd wait for you, fearless leader."

Jo hits him ungently in the shoulder and snarls something under her breath, but it doesn't matter. Dean's heard enough. It's not that Cas _can't_ make these decisions – fuck, in the last three years hunting together he's seen the son-of-a-bitch make them over and over, followed Cas's calls himself without hesitation – it's that he _won't_. Or at least won't follow through on them, not when he's got Dean around to get his hands bloody for him.

It's not a surprise, not really. Because Dean was a tool to Castiel before he was ever a person to Cas, and there's no erasing that kind of history. But it's okay, because that's what he _is_. A tool. A weapon.

"Fine," he says. "Fine." He catches Jo's eye, jerks his head, and she sighs, nods. There's no trace whatever in her face of the naïve girl who once flirted with him in a long ago Roadhouse.

They double-check the ties in each other's scarves, quick and practised, then move out.

As Jo walks over to the kid, says something to him, leads him off to one side, Dean follows _(stalks_ ) them, footsteps soft and deliberate the way his father taught him. When she's brought him far enough from the rest that no-one will have time to play hero, Dean raises the gun.

One shot. Where the base of the skull meets the neck. Kid's dead before he hits the ground. It's easy as breathing.

* * *

Lying in bed that night, Cas dead to the world beside him, stretched out long and lean in a post-coital sprawl, Dean wonders idly if he'll dream about it. If his nightmares will take the shape of a boy in a red jacket, face-down in the mud, or of the way his mother shrieked.

After Redruth, he remembers his nights being blood-red for weeks. Nine months ago and it feels like a lifetime. Like it happened to a different Dean entirely. He hasn't dreamed that badly in months – hasn't been sleeping well, exactly ( _not after Hell)_ , but hasn't been waking awash in cold sweat and adrenaline either.

Sometimes he thinks he's lost something essential inside of himself, left it flayed and bleeding on the street in ( _Detroit_ ) Atlanta.

Then again, if he feels almost nothing except ( _with Cas_ ) in the dark of the cabin, it's all to the good. Ain't like heart's done him much good in the past.

When his breathing falls into rhythm with Cas's, and sleep finally comes to take him, he doesn't dream anything whatsoever.

* * *

It's a week or so after Stafford, the quiet ungodly hours of the morning, and Dean's floating in his lifelong-insomniac state of not-quite sleep. Considering maybe giving up, climbing out onto the cabin roof, star gazing a little if it's clear and not too cold. Maybe reading one of the sci-fi novels he stole from Erin's small library of tatty paperbacks if it's overcast.

He's almost decided on it, when Cas – propped up fast asleep ( _damn him_ ) against the headboard– bolts awake with a bitten-off shout, limbs flailing. Dean's scrabbling to turn on the lamp, mind reeling through an instinctive _check the salt lines, where's the holy water, where's the gun,_ before it registers they aren't being attacked. They aren't being attacked, and Cas is gasping for breath, clutching at his head, his throat, his naked chest.

"What's going on? Cas, what's wrong?" Dean's back on the bed in an instant, gripping Cas's face between his hands. Trying to ground him, be the anchor Cas has always been for him.

"D-Dean –" Eyes wider than he's ever seen them, wild and staring, face white. Voice coming in gasps and wheezes, high with fear. "I can't – can't –" One hand painfully tight at Dean's wrist, the other pressed trembling to his own heaving chest.

Can't breathe. Okay.

There's no hesitation. Dean gets hold of Cas at shoulder and hip, pulls him forward, sits behind him, legs forming a cradle. Pulls him back to lean against Dean, hands splayed over his chest, pressing them together so Cas can feel _his_ breathing, slow and steady. Tells him, "Okay, you need to slow it right down, in for three, out for three, like I'm doing, in for three, nice and deep, out for three –" Bats away the memory of doing this for his brother years ago _(the sudden totality of Sam's panic attack, that night the dust settled after the crossroads and the Devil's Gate)._

Cas claws at Dean's hands, fingernails digging in, deep and desperate. "I can't – Dean, I think it's a – a heart –"

"Does it hurt? Cas, does your chest hurt?" Somewhere inside, he's losing it, screaming, but that's all the way on the other side of a frosted-glass wall of _just-fucking-deal_ competence, and he can't feel it. Not yet. Cas is shaking his head _no_ , stubble scraping at Dean's cheek, the side of his neck. "You're not having a heart attack, Cas, it's just a panic attack, okay? You just need to breathe, try and calm down, just focus – in for three, out for three –"

He says it over and over, voice as low and soothing as he can make it, feeling Cas shake against him, heart racing under his palm. Over and over, till the words lose their meaning, and still he can't bring Cas back down. In all the years he's known him – in all their sweaty nights spent twisted in sheets – Dean has never, _ever_ , seen Cas this lost, this consumed by physicality. Even when they're drunk or high and he's so goddamn responsive to Dean's touch, the Cas-Castiel disconnect that keeps him half a heartbeat out of time is never _quite_ gone. Not like it's gone now.

Freak-outs Dean can deal with, has been dealing with panicked victims ( _the aftermath of disasters_ ) all his fucking life, knows the drill back-to-front: you pretend you're calm and talk them through it till they're breathing right again. But this? Whatever crazy angelic shit this is, at the roots? He's got nothing.

Minutes tick by and Cas is still hyperventilating, and Dean's own chest is starting to tighten, skin crawling with creeping fear, nerves wound to breaking point, and fuck this. Sincerely, fuck this.

The duffle bag he used to live out of is stowed under the bed. In the front pocket, right where he left it, is the stash of Valium he's kept to hand since Castiel dragged him out of the Pit four years ago. His failsafe.

Half a flask of water ends up over them both in the process, but he manages to get Cas to knock back two of the pills. For a moment Dean holds the prescription bottle, considering. But no, tempting as it is, at least one of them has gotta be firing on all cylinders. The pills go back in the bag, and he settles in behind Cas again, strokes his hair and coaches his breaths, waits for the sedatives to take their hold.

It doesn't take long ( _how human is he now? Ninety percent? Ninety-five? A hundred?)_. Cas's breathing slows, and the vicious tension coiling his spine and shoulders relaxes. He lets go his death-grip on Dean's hands, threads their fingers together instead.

And of course, now Cas is calm, everything catches up to Dean. The cabin feels like ( _a_ _coffin, a rack)_ a prison, impossibly claustrophobic, and he's gonna come out of his goddamn skin if he doesn't get out right now.

"Let's get some fresh air, yeah?" he says, and the words sound brittle as hell. Fragile.

Cas doesn't call him on it ( _well, he wouldn't, lucky son-of-a-bitch is loaded up on Valium_ ), just pulls on a t-shirt while Dean shoves his feet into his steel-toed boots, follows him outside placidly. Barefoot, because Cas has some weird aversion to shoes when he can get away with it, and for some reason that one tiny freakish habit is reassuring as hell.

It isn't until they end up at the Impala – what's left of her, sitting on bricks – that Dean realises where he was headed. Doesn't have the energy to question it, ask the stupid, suicidally sentimental part of his brain what the fuck it thought it was doing. Climbs up to sit cross-legged on the achingly familiar hood, holds his hand out to tug Cas up to sit beside him.

The night is crisp and clear. There is a truly insane amount of stars in the sky. Dean's never seen so little light pollution in his life. Cas's head rests heavy on his shoulder, pushes into the touch when Dean winds his fingers into that messy dark hair.

The silence is incredible. Immense.

Into the silence, Cas says, "They cut me off."

"What?" How long has it been since Cas hit him with such a total fucking non sequitur?

A hand lifts, makes a vague motion from Cas's chest out towards the stars. "Angels. _Heaven_. I used to – there was some little bit of me left – I mean, I mean of Castiel – and I could feel things. Like Lucifer. I could feel him. The beat of his Grace. From the second the Cage opened. Even when he – and Sam – they were on the other side of the world. And the others. I could feel them. And I could – I could still see things. And I was still, still a little bit Castiel, inside. Not just _this_ ," and he pats at his own face, "but the other thing, and now I'm not anymore. You know?"

His head lifts from Dean's shoulder, hand at the base of Dean's jaw, holding him so he can't look away from Cas. Doe-eyes huge and rolling glassy, face gone somehow slack, all the firm straight edges of him smoothed away by drugs and by loss.

Dean's heart is thudding sickly against his ribs. The implications of that little speech – fuck. Fucking _hell_.

He was right, though. The disconnect is gone: the part of Cas that was the angel, and the part that was the vessel snapping at last into one cohesive whole. That must have been what triggered the panic attack – the shock of the change, and his body _responding_ to the shock, adrenaline flooding him and sending his heart-rate spiking. And the shock of _that_ intensifying the fear-response, locking the idjit into a feedback loop. Fuck.

The disconnect is gone, and now Dean's looking at Cas, and this is all of Cas. Now this body, the skin that tanned golden-brown over the long hot summer, the slow-growing stubble, the swift fingers and strong arches of ribcage and spine and thigh – this is it. This is all there is.

"I know," Dean says. His mouth feels dry as it did that time in Arizona, years ago, when he got that scar on his leg, when ( _Castiel_ ) Cas saved him ( _again_ ) and brought him ice when he thought he'd die of heat and thirst.

Cas's thumb runs over the height of Dean's cheekbone, and his mouth twists in something that's maybe trying to be a smile. His voice is loose, the heavy precision of it gone, weaves all over the place. "I can't even feel where my wings used to be," Cas says, and he sounds half-baffled, half-bitter, a child and a grey old man at once. The way John Winchester sounded, sometimes, the worst nights, after Sam ran away to California.

"I'm sorry," Dean says. Empty words, but fuck, he's got to say _something_.

No sign that Cas even hears him. Just rambles on. Not loud, not at all a rant, and Dean thinks he would have preferred that, would have preferred fury and violence. Angry drunks are easy to handle. Easier than this. "I can't see anything. I can't fucking _see_ anything, all I can see is – what's there. You're just – well, you're just _you_ , and it's – how do you people _live_ like this? This trapped, this blind, I can't – how the fuck am I meant to _stand_ this?"

His voice breaks. There are tear-tracks glittering over his cheeks. Dean doesn't have an answer. Doesn't have anything close.

If he could, he'd pack everything up into the car beneath them, drive as long and fast as he could, till the familiar purr and the motion lulled Cas into sleep. Till they were both free again.

But he's skinned and gutted his girl, and they have a world to save.

In the end, he does the only thing he can think of. He cups Cas's face in his hands, kisses him as gentle as he knows how, and when Cas presses forward, a mess of teeth and tongue and trembling hands, he takes that sudden ferocity and rolls with it. Lets Cas lose himself in the silence and the drugs and the sex.

Dean of all people knows sometimes that's the only way to survive.

* * *

Dean's watching Jo teach Theo to throw knives, Rachael laid out on the grass beside him, when Chuck walks into Chitaqua.

The guy's lucky it's Dean who sees him coming, recognises him, checks his eyes and opens the gate to let him in. Anyone else, other than Cas? He'd most likely have gotten shot on sight.

As it is, Chuck makes it through the gate, to Dean, and then he basically collapses. Under his filthy clothes, he's skin and bone, thinner even than Theo was when they found him in Alabama. Jo dispatches the kids to fetch food and water and Ellen, helps Dean mostly-carry Chuck up to the campfire site, where they deposit him on one of the benches.

"Dude, tell me you didn't walk all the way here," Dean says, half-joking.

And damned if Chuck doesn't rasp, "Took me. I dunno. Since July?"

Beside Dean, Jo does a fairly spectacular double-take. There's some things that seem kinda outlandish, even at the end of the world, and walking for two months through Croat-ridden territory, alone, is one of them.

"Fuck. How'd you even know where to find us?" he realises almost as soon as he said it's a stupid question. Prophet of the Lord, duh. "Visions, right?"

Chuck nods, slow, like his head weighs a tonne. "Set off soon's I saw you were gonna stay here. Knew was safer'n being on my own."

Dean snorts, just a little, can't help it. "Yeah, well, all relative, right?" And then, crouching down so they're on the same level, "Listen, have you been having any more, uh, visions? Like, Lucifer, the Colt, whatever, we could use a clue here."

And Chuck – haggard, eyes sunken deep into his skull – looks at him with something like pity. "No. Nothing, not since that last. And the last before that, that was. Was when you and Sam left each other. Don't think there'll be any more. Sorry."

Well, that fucking figures. Dean closes his eyes, tips his head back, swallows down frustration like bile.

Two nights ago, the last of his angel's Grace left them, once and for all. Today, a broken Prophet walks in through his gate. Fate has the sickest sense of humour.

* * *

It's a supply run. There's nothing to it, routine as a salt-and-burn. They've done them every few weeks, all summer and into fall. There's supposed to be nothing to it.

There's nothing to it all day, right up until they park in front of some massive outdoor-pursuits store ( _gotta stock up on thermal shit before winter hits)_ and get jumped by a dozen Croats.

Dean's in the back of the pick-up truck, shuffling crates around, trying to make some space, when Theo yells out, "Croats! _Croats!_ "

_Shit_. Jo's the only one with an assault rifle, all he has is his handgun, but shit, it's gonna have to do. He vaults over the side of the truck, hits the ground hard – thank God for decent boots – has the pistol out and cocked and ready. Just in time to see one of the Croats swing a fucking baseball bat at Cas's skull.

Reflex alone puts two slugs in the fucker's head before Dean can even scream a warning, but still too late. Too late. The blow connects. Cas drops like a stone.

Everything goes white.

He sees things in flashes, vision stuttering like the gunshots tearing the air. He's beside Cas, blood in his hair, groping for the pulse in his wrist. On his feet again, guarding Jo's back, Cas lying between them. Theo emptying an entire clip into a man who just laughs. Black eyes, sulphur on the air. Silver angel-blade in his hand, blood wet and warm all up his arm.

No more shots, then, and time starts running smooth again.

Dean yanks the dagger out of the demon's chest. He doesn't watch the body fall to the ground to join the Croats the demon was driving – turns and ( _fuck dignity, fuck it all_ ) runs for Cas. Doesn't even bother sticking the angel-blade back in its custom sheath, just drops it as he crouches down on the cracked road, cold with sweat, beside the prone form of the ( _angel_ ) man who has been saving him for four years straight.

There's a trickle of blood at Cas's temple, drying tacky in his hair. He's not moving. Dean rubs it away. His hands are shaking. Somewhere off to the side Theo is pacing relentlessly. He remembers grabbing at Cas's wrist, trying to check his pulse, can't remember if he found it or not, can't bring himself to try again, because – because what if – ( _no_ ) –

Cas's blood is on his fingertips, and he can't stop thinking about kneeling in the mud with Sam lolling boneless against him, Sam's blood all over his palm, and Cas is so still and this time he doesn't have a soul worth the selling and he _cannot do this again._

There's a hand gripping his wrist, tight. "He's breathing," Jo says, low and urgent. "I took his pulse, and he's breathing. He's alive, Dean."

The angle Cas is lying at is awkward, head tilted away to one side. It makes Dean think of watching over the baby in his crib, of all the nights Cas held Dean's head in his lap so he could sleep, and he reaches out, palms his cheek, meaning to shift him to a more comfortable angle –

Jo yanks hard on his wrist. "Don't! It's not safe to move him. Head injury, come on!" She snaps her fingers in his face, and he jumps a little, looks over at her for the first time. Under the tan, she's pale, and her expression is carefully empty. Her eyes are glinting, damp. "Get it together," she says, quieter.

_Head trauma, can't move the vic, dammit, boy, this is basic, basic stuff. I taught you better than this._ Dean presses his eyes closed, hand over his mouth, tries to breathe normally. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, I just –"

Cas groans. "The fuck –"

It's even more gravelly than usual, and his eyes are out of focus but they're open, and he's moving. He's _moving_.

Trying to sit up, actually. "Whoa, slow down there." Both Jo and Dean grab hold of him, keep him down. "Give it a moment, dude, you took one hell of a hit to your grapefruit."

"I don't _have_ a grapefruit, it's called a _skull_ ," Cas says, in his _shut-up-Dean-it's-too-early_ growl, and Dean snorts a half-laugh. If he's glaring and bitching, he's gotta be fine.

"Yeah, whatever," Jo says, brisk as her mother. "Can you move everything? Nothing's numb? Awesome – hey, Theo, get us some water, yeah?"

"I'll do it." Dean pats Cas's shoulder once, pushes up to his feet, picks his way around the corpses to the pick-up truck, retrieves the flask of water that's sitting in the passenger side foot-well. Watches Cas take a gulp, wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Turns to Theo, who's pulling at loose threads in his t-shirt, spooked but holding up. "C'mon, kid, let's hit that store. Sooner we get what we came here for, sooner we get back to Chitaqua."

Theo gives him a kinda weird look ( _probably freaked him out, practically crying over Cas, ugh_ ) but doesn't say anything, follows him inside. Helps him load up on firelighters and boots and all that thermal shit – jackets, gloves, underwear, sleeping bags, the lot. There are space heaters in the cabins up at Chitaqua, but even if the goddamn finicky generator holds out, going up against a Minnesota winter? They're gonna need the reinforcements.

And yeah, right now Dean needs to think about something else. Needs to not see Cas. Needs to get his fucking head back in the game.

By the time they're done they've filled every inch of space left in the truck and the armoured car Jo's driving, Cas is sitting in shotgun in the truck, looking grumpy as shit but ( _beautifully, beautifully_ ) alive, and Dean's almost stopped shaking.

The drive back to Chitaqua is a quiet couple of hours. There's a pretty colourful bruise already shadowing Cas's temple, and concussions don't usually put you in the mood for scintillating conversation. Dean tries a few times anyway, keeps piping up every now and then, making sure Cas isn't getting disoriented or having double vision or any of that crap, but his heart's not in it.

It's just. He can't turn it off.

This thing between them, at first it was accidental, and that was bad, worrying all the time about where the lines were and what was going on in that absurd angel brain, but now it's deliberate, and that's even _worse_ , because Dean can't turn it off. Can't pretend it ain't there. Not when they're fucking _living together_ , and sometimes he wakes up in the night with his face shoved in Cas's armpit and doesn't even really care, and sometimes that sappy as hell _how-did-I-ever-ever-ever-get-this-lucky?_ feeling doesn't just hit him when he's floating in the afterglow but when they're playing cards or teaching the yuppies to shoot or sorting out the goddamn septic tank.

And then the stupid son-of-a-bitch goes and nearly gets himself brained by a Croat, and Dean shouldn't have even flinched, should have kept his cool and got on with the job. But he couldn't turn it off.

He could have gotten them all killed.

And he'd tell himself he'd put an end to all of it if he knew how ( _the fucking, the kissing, the curling up in the night)_ , but he knows that's a lie. Too selfish for that by far.

So yeah, one way or another, neither of them says much on the way back to Chitaqua.

When they get back, it's starting to get dark, and there's the smell of Ellen's chili on the breeze. Cas makes a vague attempt at helping unload the cars, doesn't protest when Dean glares and Jo laughs in his face and Theo just tells him to make sure there's some food left over when they're done. So off Cas goes, only weaving very slightly, and leaves them to it.

It doesn't take too long – about ten minutes in, Risa and Ted show up, fresh as daisies, and then they really get going, passing crates between them from car to the stock cabin. Jo whistles as they go, buoyed up by the relief of a near-miss, and untouched by Dean's dark mood. When everything's unloaded, she leads the way over to the campfire, arm slung casually around Risa's waist.

Dean has to wonder quite what the story is there. If Jo would lose it the way he did today, if Risa got laid out by a Croat. If Risa would, if it was Jo.

Almost as soon as Dean makes it to the campfire, gets himself a bowl of chili, he's collared by Bobby. In his enforced downtime, the old man's been working on the problem of the Colt. All their attempts at locator rituals have failed, coming up against some kind of super-strong demon wards on the thing, and Bobby's trying to devise some way around it. So far he's had no more success there than he has in coming up with a modified exorcism to dispel Croatoan, but hope springs eternal, apparently.

"I've been trying to adapt those Old Enochian chants of Cas's to the Sumerian ceremonial framework, and I'd swear I _nearly_ had it – here, take a look at this –"

All the theory's familiar to Dean – Bobby schooled him in Latin and Sumerian himself, back in the day – but fuck, it makes his head hurt. There's a reason he was never one for all the hardcore magic research. Always been ten times better with a gun or a blade than a book, and Bobby knows it.

Still, he's the only person in camp with so much as half Bobby's experience ( _not even Cas, if it ain't Enochian, angels don't care),_ so he makes an effort. Even comes up with one or two tweaks, corrects a couple of errors in the Enochian grammar.

In his opinion, they'll only find the damn gun by getting hold of some high-up demon and shaking the fucker until it squeals, but it don't hurt to plug away at the ritual thing. If nothing else, it at least keeps Bobby occupied.

Satisfied for now, Bobby folds up his notes, shoves them into his jacket pocket, wheels back a little to talk to Ellen. Dean scans the array of benches round the edge of the fire, looking for that mop of dark hair. Maybe the idjit will have been sensible, had a bite to eat and gone back to the cabin for a lie down, you never know. Could happen.

But no. There he is, over on the far side, sitting between Lana and Jane ( _of course he is_ ), passing what's gotta be a joint back and forth.

Because, obviously, what you should really be doing after taking a freaking baseball bat to the skull is hitting on chicks and getting high. It's not like Dean's exactly a shining example of how to look after yourself after injuries, but seriously? Seriously?

He doesn't even bother trying not to glare as he makes his way over. Lana gives him a chirpy _hiya_ , which he ignores ( _been ignoring her in general since the Incident)_. "What the hell, dude?"

Cas gives him this kinda lopsided smile, head on one side. Proffers the joint. "Just having a smoke. Here –"

"Yeah, I get that." Dean plucks the joint from his hand, gives it to Jane. Grabs Cas by his jacket, pulls him up off the bench. "Some Croat used you as a fucking piñata a couple hours ago. You need to be resting, man, c'mon. Move."

" _O-kay_." Cas smirks at the girls, rolls his eyes elaborately. "Excuse me, ladies. Our fearless leader calls."

For fuck's sake. Dean yanks on Cas's jacket again, and this time he comes along. They fall into step automatically, like it's a hunt, except Cas is _definitely_ weaving about on his feet now, listing against Dean and occasionally nearly tripping over things that aren't even there.

"So, uh, what's up with _you_?" Cas asks, squinting over at Dean.

He grits his teeth. "Just don't think you oughta be smoking pot on top of that knock to your gourd, so sue me."

For some reason, Cas grins like this is the funniest thing he's ever heard. "Didn't make you jealous, did I?"

"What? Course not, you moron." Not like Dean didn't spend a decade or so fucking around at every opportunity himself. Not like it means anything. Not like he and Cas ever said they wanted to be _exclusive_ or any of that shit. Not like it matters ( _except it kind of does_ ), it really doesn't.

Cas nearly comes badly a cropper navigating the steps up into their cabin, and Dean has to haul him back upright, which sets him off giggling, and just how much did the idjit smoke, anyway? He's getting close to as baked as he was that time back at Bobby's – unless it's not the weed.

Unless it's the concussion, and Dean underestimated how bad it was, and what do you even _do_ for injuries like that? There was this one incident way back when he was fourteen and green as hell, dropped the ball going after some vengeful spirit, and Dad got a bad one on the head. The hospital kept him overnight for observation, but Dean ( _had to go back for Sammy)_ couldn't stay with him. Doesn't know what the hell the doctors were _observing_ for, what they'd do if anything happened. And yeah, so Cas isn't passing out, isn't throwing up, none of the obvious stuff, is probably gonna be fine by tomorrow, but what if, what if, what if?

Dean never really appreciated just how fragile humans are, until now. How easily broken.

The cabin's dark inside, chilly. Cas goes for the lighter and candles on the table ( _generator's down again_ ), which is about the last thing they need right now. Thankfully he doesn't struggle, doesn't protest when Dean pulls him back. "Dude, no. I'll get them in a minute. Just go the fuck to bed, alright?"

Cas sits down heavily on the side of the bed, kicks off his boots. When Dean starts to turn away, he throws an arm around his hips, grabs his belt, holding him close. Tips his face up, grinning, eyes drifting here and there over his face, down his torso, not lascivious so much as unable to hold their focus. "You gonna come too?"

Dean forces a laugh, unwinding Cas's arm from his hips. "Really not in the mood, Cas." All that gets him is an amused snort, Cas's other hand kneading at his waist, face pressed to his stomach, nipping at the stripe of skin where his t-shirt's ridden up, which might have been hot any other night, but really _isn't_ right now. And this would be why Dean hates being around drunk or high people when he's sober.

He gets a hand in Cas's hair, pulls his head back. "I'm serious, man. Not in the fucking mood. Go to bed already."

The grin fades a little. Cas squints up at Dean, head tilted to one side, an expression so almost-familiar it hurts. "Dean. What's the matter with you?"

He pulls back and this time Cas lets him. "That was – that was a bad knock you got back there. Real bad. And you ain't the Man of Steel anymore."

The words are almost painful to drag out, and Cas, sitting half-sprawled on the bed, Cas actually fucking _laughs_. Hand over his mouth, hair falling in his glassy eyes. "Yeah, well, I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

Like it's a choice. Like if Dean could, he wouldn't have taken the part of himself that still _cares_ so goddamn much it's like an ever-open wound and salt-and-burned it, long long ago. Because it's not without cost, this thing of theirs. Just like it wasn't without cost, the way he'd felt about Sam.

Let someone become the axis of your universe, and you let them become the fault line down which you'll always break. This he's known for years, like his father did before him. And maybe most of his heart is dead, cauterised and abandoned by the roadside a lifetime ago – but this one part ( _the weakest part)_ won't let go.

But how the fuck do you stop that? If he'd found the answer ( _when Dad told him to kill Sam or save him, when he sat in a cabin with his brother's cold corpse, when he saw Sam's mouth stained crimson)_ they'd none of them be in this mess right now. But here they are, and he's let Cas crawl under his skin, he's made the bed they've gotta lie in, and it can't be undone.

Dean closes his eyes, runs a hand across his mouth. "I thought you were dead, man. I thought you were gone." And he doesn't have it in him to explain how _that_ felt, he doesn't. Just – he can't do that. He can't. Not again.

"Sorry to disappoint. No getting rid of the dead weight," Cas says, and when Dean looks he's still smiling, still grinning, and maybe it'd convince someone – anyone – else, but there's no real mirth in it. No mirth and just a little too much intent behind the words. And maybe it's the pot, or the concussion, or maybe it's just the fact that he's holed up in the ass-end of nowhere with no Grace, no wings, running to stand still while ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer takes the world to pieces, but Dean can't stand it. He remembers when Cas smiled small and bright and _real_.

"What'd I do without you, huh?" Dean gets in close again, musses Cas's hair, lets himself stroke his cheek a little. Tries to keep the ache out of his voice. "What the fuck'd I do?"

Cas shrugs, laughs emptily. Slurs slightly as he says, "Keep on keepin' on, I suppose."

And that – no. No. "Fuck. Cas. C'mon, man." Dean grips Cas's shoulder, shakes it. Curls his fingers round the back of his head, the curve of his neck, stares into heavy-lidded eyes that slide away from the contact.

What good, what fucking _good_ does this thing between them do, if it doesn't even let Dean reach Cas? Make him understand? Dean watched him fall to the floor and felt the world stop beneath his feet, and the idjit thinks if he died it wouldn't _matter_?

Dean's always tried to bury that open-wound part of him, keep the weakness where it ought to be, as far away and silent as he can make it. Never give voice to it, in case it takes hold and won't let go. But Cas is sitting there with the bruise of a baseball bat mottling his temple, and he doesn't know what else to tell him but the truth. "Don't - I love you, okay? So don't you say that. I love you."

And Cas pulls him in and kisses him, soft and slack, the smell of marijuana sweet and rich on his breath, and it's not lost on Dean that Cas doesn't say a goddamned word.


	8. NOLA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean leads their meagre cavalcade as they drive into New Orleans. The city is profoundly empty, emptier even than Atlanta was on the day that it fell. There are no bodies piled up on corners, no blood in the gutters, no smell of death in the air, just blank-eyed buildings stained with the watermarks of flood after flood. Grass is pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalks, moss and creepers climbing up crumbling walls. Birds nest in ruined roofs, swoop through shattered windows, rangy feral dogs dart in twos and threes from alleyway to alleyway.
> 
> This is the face of ( _Sam)_ Lucifer's victory: humanity erased and nature reclaiming its own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for graphic torture, and major character death.

' _You can say a prayer if you need to. Or just get in line and I'll grieve you.'_

* * *

There's a snowstorm in the first week of November. It happens overnight, without warning, so Dean just wakes up one morning to a good few inches covering everything, picture perfect. Thankfully it's the light, powdery stuff, so it takes less than an hour for him to clear the track leading out of Chitaqua ( _gonna have to keep up on that, won't do to get snowed in_ ).

When that's done, he climbs up onto the roof of his and Cas's cabin, watches the kids' snowball fight, Emma and Rachael teaming up against Theo. The boy's just as into it as the little girls, all three of them near-manic with the giddiness of diversion, of something _different_ after week upon claustrophobic week of stasis. The thing about the end of the world no-one ever warns you about is how goddamn boring it is, in between the brief sprees of butchery.

It's good for the kids, releasing some of that pent-up energy of Theo's ( _making Rachael laugh_ ), and when Cas finally drags his ass out of the cabin, unshaven and red-eyed and squinting, he _immediately_ gets a snowball right in his hungover face. It's pretty much the best thing that Dean's seen all year.

The sun is starting to slowly melt the snow when Chuck turns up, hands shoved in his pockets, scarf covering half his face like it's forty below or something. Times like these, watching the civilians shivering and feeling sorry for themselves at the first sight of frost, it gives Dean an appreciation for all those deep-winter nights spent ( _with Sam_ ) in the backseat of the Impala or shitty apartments with thin walls and the heating off to stretch the money further. Helps you put things in perspective, alright.

Chuck yells up, "Dean, hey Dean?"

This had better not be anything stupid. Swear to God, sometimes it's like no-one in the damn place can make a decision without Dean there to hold their hand. "What?"

"Bobby sent me to get you."

Probably not completely stupid, then. Still possibly just a summons to listen to the old man bitch about whatever bee he's got in his bonnet now ( _the wards round the fence, failed locator spells, how Dean should've brought those hitch-hikers back to camp, yadda yadda yadda)_. "What's he want?"

Chuck shrugs, gives Dean one of those lost-puppy looks he's specialised in since he turned up half-dead at the gate. "Something about a woman on the radio from New Orleans? He wouldn't get any more specific than that."

It's enough.

Dean doesn't ask any more questions, just clambers down, tells Chuck curtly, "Get ahold of Jo, send her over. Cas too, if he's even kissing cousins with sober," and gets a move on. If the woman is who he thinks she is – and he has no doubt, because maybe there's no evidence Marie La Fontaine has survived three years of the Apocalypse, but who else would be calling Bobby from New Orleans? – this is gonna be important.

He finds Bobby in his usual daytime haunt, a cabin that's really more of a shed, at a table with the old transceiver radio surrounded by the selection of old tomes he brought out from Sioux Falls. He looks tired as hell, suffering nearly as badly as Dean from caffeine withdrawal, but he's leaning over the table with his cap pushed back on his head, chewing absently at his lower lip. It's a sight almost as familiar as the Impala: Bobby Singer putting together the first pieces of a good hunt.

_Aw, yeah._

Dean's barely closed the door behind him when he hears a woman's voice, rich even through the crackle of the radio. "Good morning, Dean. It's been a long time."

He can't help but to smile as he leans over Bobby's shoulder to speak into the receiver. That's a voice you don't forget, even when the last time you heard it was ( _a lifetime)_ years ago. "Morning, Miz La Fontaine. Must be, what, seven years since I was in NOLA?"

"Yes indeed, and I surely appreciated your help then."

It had been Dean's last solo job: while his Dad was hunting that woman in white in California, he'd been working on the clean-up after Hurricane Katrina. Laying all the revenants and ghosts and fetches to rest, getting rid of the ghouls and wraiths and will o' wisps that had homed in on the city in the wake of the disaster. Any normal year, Marie La Fontaine and her witches could have handled it no problem, but it'd been far from a normal year, and so they'd called in a bit of out-of-town assistance.

Then John had dropped right off the radar. When he'd mentioned asking his brother for help, Marie La Fontaine had said _you two boys will need each other by the end_ , and if the decision hadn't already been made, it was then. He'd salt-and-burned the last of the bones and turned the Impala toward Stanford, and that had been that. And if a part of him has regretted it ( _since the crossroads_ ) for years, that's his own damn fault.

"Thank you, ma'am." There've been times, particularly the last few years, what with ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer walking the earth and the way the climate's gone utterly haywire in his wake, he's thought about heading back to NOLA, lending a hand, seeing what she had to say. But there was always another hunt, another crisis, and the deep-down awareness that whatever she could tell him, he probably wouldn't want to hear. "I would've come down to help y'all, I know the last couple hurricane seasons have been bad, but –"

"You've had your hands full a long time now, don't you fret," she says, serious, and then, "Ain't no storm the Morning Star could throw at us me and mine couldn't handle. 'Sides, the storms done scared most everyone else out of town, and I figure that's the only reason we ain't up to our necks in Croatoan right now."

"Every cloud has a silver lining, huh." He doesn't bother asking how she knows about Lucifer. You don't get to be queen witch of New Orleans by accident.

"Amen. Now you listen, boy." _Here it comes._ Dean leans forward, grips the edge of the table tight. "Are you still looking for a way to put down that damned brother of yours?"

That stops him short. He spent weeks in New Orleans, and never once heard Marie La Fontaine swear – she looked askance at him if he said so much as _for God's sake._ She's not saying _that damned brother_ the way Bobby would, she means _your brother, who is damned_ , and it's not exactly a fucking surprise, but still. It's one thing to think it, another to hear it from somebody else. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

There's what he thinks is her appreciative sniff, and then, "Now I have some information 'bout a certain gun, and I'd be right to think you'd be interested, no?"

Dean looks at Bobby, heart thudding hard in his ears, and says, feeling like it's a goddamn dream, "Oh, we're interested, ma'am."

The cabin door opens again and Jo slips in, looking wary. Bobby beckons her over, a finger to his lips, and she ducks down so he can catch her up, whispering rapidly in her ear.

Marie La Fontaine's switched from her easy, motherly tone to her steel-trap business voice. "There's a fella here with me, name of Crowley – a demon, let's be clear 'bout this – and he has the gun. Samuel Colt's magic gun. Now he's willing to hand it over –"

"Wait wait, don't tell me, there are conditions."

"Sure are. You must guarantee it will be used on the Morning Star, on your brother, and no one else. My guest and his people are being hunted by some rival group, and you've got to promise them immunity, and your help if they need it." Dean opens his mouth, but before he can even get there, Marie continues, "And you got to make the deal official. Sealed. By you _personally_ , Dean."

Behind him, Bobby swears under his breath, and Jo kicks the wall. Dean closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. Of course. Of _course_. It's never easy.

Dean had promised himself years ago, _no more working with demons, no more motherfucking_ deals _with demons_. Not after that crossroads bitch ( _what's dead stays dead, oughta killed himself, not brought Sam back even after Dad's warning_ ), not after Alastair, and absolutely not after all the shit that went down with Ruby. He's seen Hell and he knows so intimately that sometimes it really does give you exactly what you want, but at a price you can't ever stop paying.

But. But.

He looks up. Bobby's flushing beet red with fury, the way he did when he found out about the last deal, and when he meets Dean's eyes he shakes his head vigorously. But then, that's to be expected. Bobby's sharp as a tack, always has been, but he's still clinging to the code he taught Dean ( _and Sam_ ) back when he was Uncle Bobby and the world hadn't gone to the fucking Devil.

Jo's fists are curled tight at her sides, and she's pacing in tight, frustrated circles. Dean whistles down-up, her signal, and she looks up at him, nods once, curt.

Dean takes a long, long breath, and says, "I'll need to see the gun and a demonstration before I'm kissing anyone, and the whole thing goes down in your house." The La Fontaine house is so heavily warded that under that roof a demon shouldn't be able to so much as fart in the wrong direction.

The briefest of pauses on the other end of the line, and then a different voice – English-accented, male – drawls, "Well, sunshine, you got yourself a deal. Don't take too long collecting."

"Two days, tops." Dean leans over, flicks the power switch on the radio.

As soon as the radio's off, Bobby bursts out, "What the hell was that, Dean? Haven't you learnt your lesson yet, you idjit? What happened to never –"

"Can it, Bobby," Jo snaps, stopping her pacing to get up in his face. "It's the fucking _Colt_ we're talking about here _._ We _need_ that thing, unless you've come up with another way to waste the Devil, huh?"

Bobby's eyes narrow, and Dean grabs Jo's jacket, shoves her back a step, gets in between them before things descend. Nasty temper on the both of them when they get going. "Look, Bobby, I swear to you, I will double-cross this son-of-a-bitch if I can. I will. But if it comes down to it, Jo's right. I said I'd do whatever it takes to put Lucifer on ice, and that ain't changed. _Capisce_?"

For a moment it looks like Bobby's gonna argue it, then he sighs, shakes his head, tugs his cap down in defeat. Dean claps him on the shoulder briefly, turns back to Jo. "Right, safety in numbers, we are not going into this without back-up. Get hold of Risa, Cas, your momma, Theo, Pete, Jaeger. I'm gonna start loading up the cars. We need to be on the road by noon."

* * *

"So, a witch you haven't seen in the better part of a decade gets you on the wire with a story about some demon we've never heard of wanting to make a deal for the Colt … and you just thought, what? This seems like a reasonable plan? Let's just show up like they asked?"

Cas looks so ragingly hungover ( _even at gone eleven AM)_ Dean would feel sorry for him, if it weren't for the fact he's lying down in the backseat of the armoured car that Dean and Theo are busy packing. Like getting all snarky and occasionally lifting his feet so they aren't completely in the way constitutes a worthwhile goddamn contribution to the cause. And yeah, Dean's been there, he's mighty familiar with the morning after the night before, but when you've got a job, you've got a job. Hangover, flu, or broken bones, makes no odds.

"Yeah, well, you got a better plan?" Cas gives him a dirty look and drapes his arm over his face. "Thought not." Dean stashes the final pack of bottled water in the foot-well. "Look, man, I know Marie La Fontaine from way back. If she says this is legit, it's legit."

"We're ready to go over here!" Pete calls out, and then Ellen yells, "Same here. You boys done?"

Dean turns to Theo. "Anything else?" The kid throws him one of the first-aid packs they made up a while back: antiseptic, painkillers, dental floss for stitches, dressings, antibiotics, burn cream, holy water. Dean considers for a moment, then tosses it lightly at Cas. It lands on his stomach, earning him a muffled curse. "Yeah, we're good to go."

"Hey, can I drive?" Theo's practically bouncing on his toes, amped up like Dean remembers being, at seventeen when hunts were still a novelty.

Actually, truth to tell, he's looking forward to this a little himself. Good long drive, and at the end of it, maybe ( _don't think it, you'll jinx it)_ – well. Maybe.

"Yeah, if we get a decent clear stretch of road for ya." After all, this car's not his baby.

They climb in, and Jo signals Chuck and Ted to open the gate, and leads off, in the other armoured car. Pete and Jaeger are next, in the pick-up truck, with Dean following after. In the rearview he can see Bobby watching them go, looking decades too old with a thick blanket wrapped around his legs, Emma and Rachael standing either side of him. None of them wave.

Chuck and Ted pull the gate shut again, and they turn a corner, and the camp disappears from sight.

"Dean," Cas says from the backseat, so sudden and raw-voiced and serious it sounds like it did years ago. When Cas _(Castiel_ ) said Dean's name like it was more than a word, like it ( _he_ ) meant something profound and baffling and vital.

"Yeah, Cas?" He chances a glance behind him, but Cas still has his arm crooked over his face, shielding him, unreadable.

"You truly trust this woman La Fontaine?"

He says it in that flat expressionless tone he still puts on sometimes, when things go to shit and they get jumped by Croats, or Bobby insists on another strategy meeting that goes nowhere, and all of a sudden Dean's pissed as hell. Dude doesn't show up when Dean asks him to, doesn't lift a finger to help with the packing, but when it comes to picking holes in the plan, _then_ he's all serious angel again? The fuck is that?

"Actually, yeah. I do trust her. Truly." And maybe he'd bother explaining why, if Cas hadn't been too busy recovering from another fucking late one with Lana and Pippa to get himself over to Bobby's to hear the story first hand. But no.

Dean's all gearing up for a fight _(been a long time coming_ ), in front of Theo or not, when Cas says, mild as you please, "Well, okay then."

"I – what?"         

"I said, okay then." Ignoring Theo's snigger, Dean looks back over his shoulder, and this time Cas is looking at him. He looks like hell, all pale with bags upon bags upon bags under his eyes, but he's smiling. He's smiling and it's weary and rueful but beneath that it is _trusting_ , and his stupid pretty face just lights up with it. "S'good enough for me. Your call, fearless leader."

And Dean nods, summons up a smile, but it's hollow. Because he just realised what it is about that nickname that bothers him, even ( _especially)_ when it isn't mocking. Castiel spent millennia following the Archangels blindly, and then Cas followed Dean into Hell, and into humanity, and is still following him now, the way Jo and Theo and Risa and the rest are, and the weight of the trust he never asked for is going to crush him.

* * *

It takes a day and a half to make the drive. Longer than Dean would like, because Risa insisted they actually stop for a few hours in the night rather than power through, but not as long as he'd feared, because they don't stumble on any trouble on the way. The roads are cracked and strewn with the wreckage of abandoned cars, bleached-bare bones. The wall that borders the thirty-mile quarantine zone ringing Kansas City is blasted to ruins, but they see no one. No bands of scavenging Croats. No lurking demons. Not a single sign of life.

As good an omen as he could have hoped for.

* * *

Dean leads their meagre cavalcade as they drive into New Orleans. The city is profoundly empty, emptier even than Atlanta was on the day that it fell. There are no bodies piled up on corners, no blood in the gutters, no smell of death in the air, just blank-eyed buildings stained with the watermarks of flood after flood. Grass is pushing up through the cracks in the sidewalks, moss and creepers climbing up crumbling walls. Birds nest in ruined roofs, swoop through shattered windows, rangy feral dogs dart in twos and threes from alleyway to alleyway.

This is the face of ( _Sam)_ Lucifer's victory: humanity erased and nature reclaiming its own.

Dean's memory leads them down toward the Lower Ninth Ward, the stamping ground of Marie La Fontaine and all the witches under her thumb. He has them following the broad main road, and apart from all the godawful potholes, everything's fine. Too fine. Not a sign of anyone anywhere. Dean's starting to worry that he might have screwed up somewhere, have them going in the wrong direction. Then they reach the bridge across the canal that bounds the Ward, and hit a roadblock.

_Roadblock_ is possibly too grandiose a name for what is essentially a massive pile of flotsam and jetsam, but that's the idea. There is a gap in the middle just wide enough for a single car to pass, with an ancient Jeep parked across it. Daubed across everything in layers of black paint are patterns Dean vaguely recognises as hoodoo symbols, with a few letters of Enochian and Devils' Traps thrown into the mix.

They're in the right place, all right.

As they approach, the passenger door of the Jeep opens, and a woman gets out, holding a shotgun, sigils drawn in Sharpie all down her jeans. No mask, no scarf or shirt or rag tied over her mouth. Seemed too good to be true, but looks like Croatoan really _hasn't_ gotten here. Dean stops the car maybe fifty yards from the roadblock, tells Cas to take the wheel and haul ass if shit goes down, and climbs out.

The woman meets him halfway between their respective cars, and they do the wary little holy-water-silver-knife-check-the-eyes dance, then shake hands. "Dean Winchester. And you must be one of Miz La Fontaine's grandkids?" She's younger than he expected, early twenties, and he doesn't recognise her, but last time he was in NOLA, Dean spent a lot of time with Marie's youngest son, and this girl is the spit of him.

"Yeah. Chantelle." She looks him up and down, then turns back toward the roadblock, raises one arm and waves twice. The Jeep revs up and reverses, opening the way. "Alright, go back to your people, follow me. I'll take y'all through to base."

_Base_ turns out to be a large abandoned house on the other side of the bridge, presumably chosen because it's in slightly better shape than most of the other buildings. A pair of well-built men are leaning on either side of the front door, each with a gun and a knife ( _carved with runes like the ones on Dean's_ ) at their belts. They're wearing suits – the most battered suits Dean's ever laid eyes on, yeah, but still, they look ridiculously out of place. Even more so when another guy and a girl come out of the house, both of them obviously related to Chantelle, rosaries wound around their wrists, protective symbols drawn all over their clothes.

At Chantelle's nod, Dean parks the car, gets out, motions for the others to follow. Almost instantly Cas is at his shoulder. "Dean, those men …"

He makes a quick swiping motion with his left hand, _I'm-on-it_. "Right, what the fuck are you two? Cuz you sure as hell ain't witches."

The two suits smirk at one another, and the one on the left tilts his head, flashing black-in-black eyes. Behind Dean, Jo makes a sharp hissing noise, and he's instinctively reaching for his demon-killing knife in its sheath on his hip when Chantelle steps between them, hands raised placatingly. "Hey, y'all need to chill out, okay? They're with Crowley, they ain't gonna start shit. Okay? You can put that pig-sticker down, hon."

Dean glances at Jo, at Cas, nods. He slides his knife back into its sheath, and they do the same, the glinting angel-blades vanishing. The weapons may be hidden away again but not a one of them relaxes, not with a pair of demons only feet away.

The man who just emerged from the house gives their group an appraising look. "Winchester and company, huh?" He steps forward to shake hands. "I'm Bryan, this is Adele. Us and Chantelle, we're all cousins. Glad to see y'all brought muscle, we've been having demon trouble all week and it's only getting worse. "

The demon on the left scowls and spits deliberately to the side, and the one on the right says darkly, "Still can't believe that little upstart bitch thinks she's gonna get the gun. Thinks she's gonna outdo _Crowley_? Please."

Ah, demons and their little turf wars and back-stabbing blood feuds. Like Dean didn't hear enough about all that crap when he was downstairs. "Yeah, well. You've got all the ways in and out of the Ward locked down like that bridge back there, right?" Chantelle nods. "Awesome. So I figure Cas and I go down to see Miz La Fontaine and Crowley, do the deed, and the rest of my people help hold the bridges. Then we haul ass, get outta your hair. Sound like a plan?"

"Yeah, just one thing." Adele steps forward. She's a couple years younger than Chantelle, looks enough like her they could be sisters, but unlike her two cousins, she isn't carrying a gun, or even a knife. Dean's willing to bet she ain't exactly _unarmed_ , though, that she's got enough tricks up her sleeve to gank them all if she has a mind to. Marie La Fontaine might have all the witches in New Orleans under her thumb, keep them in line, but that doesn't mean for a second that they're harmless.

He pulls on a smile. "And what's that, sweetheart?" If this is some new _condition_ they're gonna hit him with at the last minute –

The girl doesn't smile back. She nods at Cas, and her dark eyes are cold and narrowed. "He stays here. _Gra-mère_ doesn't want nothing to do with fallen angels."

"What the fuck," Jo says blankly, which, yeah.

So she'll play around with demons, but fallen angels are a no-no? Dean's tempted to argue the point, just on principle – what kind of logic is _that_ – but it's not worth it. Anyway, if they do get caught in the crossfire of whatever bloody demon politics they're in the middle of, their best fighters will be more use out here. He shrugs. "Fine. Ellen, you come with me. Rest of you, if shit hits the fan, Jo and Cas are calling the shots."

Adele says coolly, "Need me to take you down to _Gra-mère_ 's house?"

"Nah, I remember the way." Dean turns around, catches Cas's eyes, then Jo's, tilts his head deliberately to the left and then the right. Cas nods almost imperceptibly, and Jo flicks the first two fingers of her right hand where it rests on the hilt of her angel-knife, their _roger-that_ signal. First sign of any double-crossing going on? Both those demons'll be dead before the sons-of-bitches know what's hit them. "See you on the other side."

"Back atcha," Jo calls as he heads off around the corner, Ellen half a pace behind, shotgun slung over her shoulder. Risa lifts a hand to wave as they go, and Theo throws up a mock salute. Neither Cas nor Jo turn around.

Never take your eyes off a demon, _especially_ not if it says it's on your side.

It's a fifteen-minute walk to the La Fontaine house, tops, but the eerie silence of the place makes it seem longer. It's oppressive, like the deep bruised-dark of the clouds brewing across the sky above them, a storm about to break.

"Truthfully now," Ellen says, barely above a whisper, "what d'you think of this whole thing?"

Dean snorts. "I think I'll like it a lot better when I got the gun in my hand and NOLA in my rearview." He's whispering too, shoulders tight with the quiet. He'd almost prefer it if they got jumped by a few Croats. Least it'd relieve the tension. "You're packing salt rounds, right?"

"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs," she says, dry, swats lightly at the back of his head, as though they're back at the Roadhouse and he just cheeked her. He barks out a laugh and the sound of it surprises him. Then they pass a barely-standing house with ' _GOD HATES US ALL'_ painted in huge black letters across its peeling face, and that kills the laughter in his throat ( _wrong though, He doesn't hate, just don't give a damn)_. "Reminds me of Detroit," Ellen whispers, and she sounds weary, so very old and weary.

"Don't say that," Dean hisses sharply. Because yes, yes, she's right, of _course_ it's not like Atlanta, it's sick and silent like Detroit was on the day Meg gave him the great long scar that runs along his hairline. The last time he saw ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam. And of all the things to think of, all the memories to invoke, that is some bad fucking juju if ever there was any.

Time runs in circles, in cycles, Murphy's Law spirals, but there are some thoughts you just don't _think_. Some things you lock in a box and never think about and it's beyond him how Ellen lived through decades with hunters and three years of the Apocalypse and doesn't understand that.

He runs the pads of his fingers over the runes carved into the handle of his knife, the back-of-his-hand-familiar inlays of the handgun at his thigh, comfort blankets. A knife forged in Hell, his trusty M1911, and at the end of the road, the lucky talisman of a pistol his father bled for. Anything comes after them? He can gank it.

_Non timebo_ fucking _mala._

The La Fontaine house was half a ruin when last he saw it, and although it _looks_ worse now, Dean has the feeling it's probably actually in better shape. Sure, the windows have all been replaced with bits of wood and board, and it's obviously been patched up over and over again with whatever they could scavenge from nearby, but makeshift repairs are at least signs that someone cares, is making the effort. And it helps when you know the weird symbols all over the door and where the windows used to be are high-calibre wards, not just random graffiti.

There's a black Pontiac parked outside. It's got a Massachusetts license plate and angel-proofing sigils scratched into the paint work ( _not his baby but makes him itch even so)_.

"Looks like we're in business," Ellen mutters, nodding at the car.

"Oh yeah." The Colt is so close he can almost _feel_ it, fitting his hand like it was made for him alone, myth and history made solid in his palm. How long has it been? Five years, nearly?

Dean takes the front steps in one. Raps his knuckles three times on the peeling green of the front door. "Miz La Fontaine, it's Dean Winchester."

The silence is deafening.

He glances over at Ellen. Her lips are thinned out, her hand on the shotgun resting over her shoulder. She quirks an eyebrow and he nods. The shotgun is off her shoulder and up and ready in a heartbeat.

"Miz La Fontaine? Marie?" This time his fist hits the door hard enough to drive splinters into his knuckles ( _gonna_ _sting like a bitch later)_. "Crowley? Miz La Fontaine? Anyone home?"

"This don't feel right," Ellen mutters. She shifts closer, puts her back to him, scans the streets.

"Yeah, you think?" Dean tries the doorknob. Nothing. He gets out the demon knife, bangs the hilt hard against the door. Nothing. "Anyone in there? Marie?"

A series of sharp popping sounds makes them both jump. The noises are coming from behind Dean, the direction they came from, the direction of the bridge and the roadblock and ( _Cas, Jo_ ) their people, and even as far away as they are, in the vacuum-quiet they are unmistakeable. Gunshots.

"Fuck this." Dean shifts back, kicks the door, weight and fear and fury all behind it. It only takes one hit and the damn thing crashes inwards, splintering off at the hinges. He's bounding through as soon as it hits the floor, Ellen hot on his heels.

The smell hits him all at once: blood and sulphur thick and heavy. He darts down the empty hall, checks the front room to the left – nothing – Ellen checks the kitchen on the right – nothing – then he shoulders the sitting room door open and the walls are drying crimson and the stench of Hell is overpowering.

"Shit. Shit _._ " For a moment Dean's throat closes up ( _the Pit, the rack, the rack)_ and his stomach rolls over, for no goddamn reason, because come _on._ He closes his eyes, breathes, and opens them half a heartbeat later and scans the room with the gaze of a hunter.

There are three bodies on the floor. Marie La Fontaine and her youngest son both have their throats cut. That's where all the blood must have come from. They flank the corpse of a short middle-aged man in a black suit. Yellow powder dusts the warped floorboards under the curl of his hands, his neck. A single bullet hole pierces the breast pocket of his suit, and when Dean crouches down, he sees the edges of the wound are scorched black, gets an astringent whiff of ozone under the blood and sulphur.

Has to be Crowley. Shot. Shot dead.

_Shit_.

"Oh, Christ – Dean, is that –"

He's up on his feet again, glancing around – no footprints, no obvious trails in the blood. "We've been scooped. Someone shot him with the Colt. We gotta find them."

Ellen's face is ashen. "My God, you don't think that's what we heard –?"

Dean shakes his head sharply. "No. Bodies are still warm, we have to search the house. Now."

Even if she doesn't have the steel killer instinct of her daughter, Ellen's still got a damn clear head under fire. A moment to breathe, and then she's right there with him, eyes sharp with focus. "Okay. You take upstairs, I'll check out back."

"On it." He takes the stairs at a run, urgency singing through his nerves and lending him speed. If he can just get the gun, maybe they can salvage something from this goddamned mess of a job. Ten to one Crowley had the thing on him, but if it's in one of Marie La Fontaine's spelled boxes, maybe – just maybe, if he's quick enough –

He's almost at the top when the demon comes barrelling out of the door ( _eyes burning red)_ on the landing straight ahead and body-slams him like a fucking freight train. The force of the impact has them both flying, falling back into empty space, missing the staircase almost entirely to crash straight into the hall floor.

Instinct lifts Dean's arm, tosses the knife in his hand away so he doesn't end up shish-kebabed on his own weapon. Then he lands, taking the full weight of himself and the demon's muscle-bound host. All the air leaves his lungs in a convulsive rush, and there's a pop and a crunch in his right shoulder as the joint slides out of place.

Can't breathe, can't breathe, he's trying to bring his legs up to kick the demon off of him, trying to shout a warning out to Ellen but no air, he can't breathe, no air, the demon's still on him, _fuck_. There are iron fingers curled around his neck. A fist slams into his face and he sees stars, blinding. The weight on him lifts, and the thing is running away, but he still can't breathe, can't fill his burning lungs, and he can't get up because everything's spinning and there's blood running into the back of his throat and Jesus Christ they are _fucked_.

Gunshots, _one-two_. A red-ragged scream on a too-familiar voice splits the air.

Pure adrenaline ( _no no no)_ gets Dean to his feet, sends him staggering on shaking legs down the hall, through the bloodied sitting room, out into the backyard.

The demon is nowhere to be seen. Ellen is collapsed against a fence post. Her belly is split open diagonally from the base of her ribcage on her left side almost to the right hip. Blood is soaking right through two heavy shirts. Guts peek through the gash, gleaming dully.

Wound like that, she's dead. She's dead already but Dean goes to her, half falls to kneel beside her. He pulls off his jacket, biting his lip savagely as it yanks his dislocated shoulder, presses it to her stomach. Takes her right hand, holds it to the jacket.

"You keep that pressed down, okay?" Ellen nods jerkily. Her breaths are coming in shallow, wet pants. He lets himself touch her cheek briefly, stroke her hair back from her clammy forehead. "I need to – I'll be back in just a minute, then we're gonna go, go fix you up. It's okay. You're gonna be okay."

Then Dean stands up, walks back into the house, leaving the woman who is the nearest thing he's known to a mother since he was four years old bleeding on the floor.

His knife is still lying in the hall. He picks it up, left-handed and clumsy, goes back up the stairs as fast as he can with his chest still burning, head spinning from the sucker-punch.

Okay. Bathroom, bedroom, Marie's 'study'. Thunderbirds are go.

He turns the place upside down with a frantic efficiency to match his father on five-star form. The Colt ( _of course_ ) is nowhere to be found.

They are all so fucked it isn't even funny.

Out in the yard, Ellen is white-faced, white-lipped. Dean's brown jacket is stained with blood. She looks up at him as he steps through the back yard, lifts her head slowly like it weighs a ton. "Find it?" she rasps.

He considers lying, telling her _yes_ , letting her believe she's dying _for_ something, but he can't. He can't. "No." He crouches at her side, takes in the pallor, the spreading stain through the jacket, the glaze of her hooded eyes. There is no way – not even if he had the medical kit right here – no way – but he's gotta try. Got to. Doesn't know how not to. "Okay. Listen, we've gotta get you up, and my shoulder's fucked up, so I'm gonna need you to hold that jacket, I'm gonna need you to help. Okay?"

"Okay," she says, the words faint and whistling through her teeth.

"Awesome." When he pulls her arm over his shoulders, she grips onto the collar of his shirt. He wraps his good left arm around her waist, hauls her up onto her feet. "C'mon, let's get this show on the road."

And so they go.

So they go, step by excruciating step, Dean doing his best to take as much of Ellen's weight as he can. At first she's just leaning on him, but her breathing's getting more and more laboured, her steps heavier, and then he's half-dragging, half-carrying her. The fierce burst of adrenaline's fading and with it the ability to power through the pain, ignore the agony in his shoulder washing his vision with grey, the blood trickling into his mouth from the pulp the demon made of his nose. It took them fifteen minutes to get out to the house when they were both firing on all cylinders, when it wasn't an inch at a time by the skin of their teeth, and if they get jumped by demons they're dead meat, and he doesn't know how long he can keep this up, how long _Ellen_ can last –

But he bites down on his bottom lip, puts one foot in front of the other. Keeps talking, coaching Ellen along, a stream of meaningless bullshit chatter, no thought to it, just letting his mouth run and run and it feels like that's the only thing keeping them going. And then it's the only thing keeping Ellen conscious enough to even try to help support herself, the only thing keeping her there.

Have to get back to the base. Jo will be there ( _can't be dead, can't be_ ) and she has to see Ellen. Has to see her mother before the end. Has to. Can't let that happen. He let the angels and the demons and his brother start the Apocalypse but he cannot let this happen.

The house acting as base is within sight when Ellen dies.

Dean feels it. The moment her breathing breaks off to a low long rattle and then stops. The weight in his arms goes slack, and her head lolls back, mouth yawning open, eyes sightless, and it's just one more death to add to the hundreds of millions laid at ( _Lucifer)_ Sam's feet but it's also _not_ and he doesn't know how he can keep on walking but he does.

It's only a few dragging steps later that Cas comes running out to him from the house, Theo right behind. In the blink of an eye they're beside him, taking hold of Ellen's body, and Dean staggers for a moment, unbalanced by the lifting of that burden.

He follows in their wake as they rush back into the house. It's almost bare, wallpaper peeling and floorboards warped, crates and weaponry littering the floor. They're met by Chantelle and Bryan, both of them looking wild-eyed and strained.

"We'll take her out back," Bryan says, and he and his cousin step forward and Cas and Theo pass Ellen to them, and they carry her down the hall, disappear out through another door before Dean really knows what's happening. Everything feels surreal, far away, and he'd think it was a dream, some product of his warped subconscious, but his shoulder is radiating pain and he tastes rust in his mouth and there is no waking up from this one.

"Where are they –" he says, hoarse.

"Pete's dead. We built a pyre outside," Cas says, his voice hard and hollow. He's as haggard as Dean's ever seen him, lines drawn deep into his face with despair, but even now there's a light of something like hope in those blue eyes. "Did you –"

If there's some way of sugar-coating it, he doesn't know it. He wouldn't, anyway, even if he did. "No. Demons got there before we did. The Colt's gone."

_We lost Ellen and Pete for nothing._

Cas closes his eyes. Theo hisses _fuck,_ spins around and kicks the wall savagely. His shoulders hitch, breath catching in what sounds like a sob.

And fuck, Dean wishes he could let himself go like that - lose it, cry, break down a little - but he can't. He has to keep going, has to keep _them_ going, the way he ( _kept Dad going and Sammy going_ ) always has. One foot in front of the other, don't look down, just fucking deal.

So he says, "Cas. Cas, my shoulder's dislocated, I need you to fix it for me. C'mon, man." And Cas opens his eyes and Dean leans against the wall while Cas shoves the joint back into place, biting through his lip with the effort of not screaming. Even when it's done the damn thing still doesn't feel right, that's three dislocations now and it was never really the same since the first. So he has Theo improvise a sling from one of their medical kits while Cas runs him through what went down after things got FUBAR.

Long story short, one of Crowley's rivals stole a march on them, somehow got around all the protections and was already in the Lower Ninth. The base got mobbed, but they managed to hold ground, stop them from getting out that way. Jo headed off with Risa, Jaeger, Crowley's two cronies and the witch-girl to make sure that the other bridge out of the Ward is secure.

"We caught one of the demons in a Devils' Trap. It's in the back room," Cas says.

He doesn't explain why it hasn't been exorcised or killed. Dean doesn't ask him to. They just look at each other, and they both of them know. Cas looks almost as tired as Dean feels, blue eyes empty, and it seems unthinkable that this is the ( _angel_ ) one who took the razor from Dean's hand and raised him from the depths of hell.

Then again, that's _not_ who Cas is, not anymore.

Chantelle and Bryan finally reappear. "Pyre's ready," Chantelle announces, brushing her hands off on her ragged jeans. "Y'all wanna send your people off?"

Dean doesn't need to think twice. "We wait for Jo." He'd been the one to set the fire at his father's funeral ( _wasn't allowed to go to his mother's)_ , it's only right Jo does the same for Ellen.

"Maybe – do you think we should go after her? And Risa? Like, in case they –" It's the first Theo's spoken since kicking the wall, and his voice breaks tremulously as he looks away, eyes watery. Cas squeezes his shoulder, glances at Dean expectantly.

Dean drags his good hand down over his face. "Look, kiddo, those girls can take care of themselves. If we ain't careful this is gonna end up with everyone chasing everyone else all over the goddamn city. We sit tight."

It looks for a minute as if Theo's about to argue, but then he nods quickly, presses the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes and leans against the wall. Shrugs Cas off when he tries to put an arm stiffly around his shoulders.

Turning to Bryan and Chantelle, Dean says, "I'm real sorry to tell y'all this, but Miz La Fontaine, she's dead. Her son – Rene is it? – too."

The two Cajuns stare at him blankly for a moment, and then Bryan lets loose a string of what sounds like French curses, and Chantelle sits down heavily, puts her head in her hands.

Dean glances over at Cas, one eyebrow raised and he nods instantly, and Dean says, "Listen, when the others are back, we can help y'all go back for them, lend a hand –"

"No," Bryan tells him, and his voice is thick with emotion but certain. "We'll take care of it. We got our own ways – Adele, she'll be spell-casting, and she won't want anyone who ain't family around."

And that Dean of all people can respect. "I hear you."

Moments later they hear footsteps ringing out from outside. Dean whistles up-down at Cas, and in an instant he's on his feet, long bloodied angel-knife ready in his hand, Chantelle and Theo hefting shotguns as he heads over to throw the door open –

And there's Risa, one side of her face coated in blood from a cut on her forehead, her own sawed-off up and at the ready. "Oh thank fuck," she says, soon as she sees Cas, and he steps aside to let her dart in, followed by Jaeger supporting the witch-girl Adele, who is limping heavily. Bryan is at her side instantly, helping her sit down on one of the crates. Jo ( _guarding the rear_ ) comes in last, crimson stained angel-knife in her hand.

Dean pushes up onto his feet. "Jo, what –"

"They got away." She's flushed, stray locks of hair sticking to her face, voice clipped with barely-restrained fury. "The motherfuckers got past us – five of them. Went out across the bridge, made it into a car, took off hell for leather. Crowley's two fucked off and left us, smoked out of the meatsuits. The Colt?"

She knows what he's going to say, he can see it in her eyes. "The demons – the other demons – have it."

Jo doesn't say anything. They just stare at each other, wordless. Dean thinks her face must be the mirror of his, rigid with strain, with the effort of keeping it together instead of screaming and punching something until his knuckles are broken and bloodied.

"We need to go," Risa says, grabbing at Dean's good arm, speaking so rapidly her words fall over each other, almost incoherent. "We need to leave, get out of here while we can, before we get jumped again –"

"Shut the fuck up, we ain't going nowhere," Jo snaps, so contemptuous Risa rounds on her, eyes narrowed, and holy shit, of all things, a lovers' quarrel they do not need.

Before Risa can retort and escalate the damn thing, Dean cuts in, voice as commanding-officer flat as ( _his Dad's_ ) he can make it, "Risa, look, these sons-of-bitches have the Colt and we don't know jack about 'em. We got one in a Devils' Trap and no-one's going anywhere until it's told me every last goddamn thing it knows. Understood?"

She gives him one of her sharp-edged looks of appraisal. "And what makes you so sure a demon's gonna tell you anything?"

It almost makes him laugh, because fuck, she doesn't understand the first thing about him. About the things he's seen, things he's _done_ , that make ganking a townful of Croats look like child's play. Things she, with her human's conception of ( _torture_ ) pain, cannot even imagine. "Oh, I got my reasons. We're staying."

Risa opens her mouth, hesitates, shuts it again. Nods.

"Dean," Jo says suddenly. She's looking around the room, and she has her little silver-plated pocketknife out, twirling it nervously in one hand. She's done the math. "Dean, my momma –"

"Dead. A demon." He doesn't beat about the bush, because she's earned the truth, straight-up and straight-out and hunter-cold. And he doesn't look away from her for a second, because he's earned the way her face crumples, lips working soundlessly, jaw clenched against the threat of tears. And the way she swallows, breathes, wipes her face clean of the pain.

Then Cas steps forward, shoulders roughly past Dean, takes her elbow. Says, soft as he can in that scraped-raw voice, "Jo, we set up a hunter's funeral for Ellen. She's waiting for you. Pete too."

Jo closes her eyes, fists clenching at her sides, the way they do when she's psyching herself up for something. Then she tells Cas, "Lead on."

As they head out, Dean intercepts Adele, stepping in front of her and Bryan, who's supporting her. In an undertone he tells them, "Folks, look. I respect the operation y'all have going on here, I do, but you're in a kinda unsustainable situation. Now I'm thinking safety in numbers, we've got more firepower than you do – no offence to your witch stuff, I'm talking guns here – and our place back in Minnesota is a damn sight harder to find and easier to defend than NOLA. If y'all want to come back to Chitaqua with us, well." He spreads his good hand. "Offer's there."

Bryan looks thoughtful, opens his mouth as if to speak, then catches himself and looks to Adele. _Defers_ to her. Dean guesses that with their grandmother dead, this skinny little thing just inherited as queen witch of New Orleans. Damn.

She fixes him with a cool, calm stare. Her voice is even when she says, "Winchester, we survived Hurricane Katrina. We survived Azazel and Lilith and we will survive Croatoan. You wanna help us?"

He nods once, sharply. Course he does. Marie La Fontaine was a good woman, a _great_ woman, an ally if not precisely a friend, and you don't turn your back on something like that.

"There is _one_ thing you can do." Adele takes a limping step forward. She sounds totally, absolutely confident, and he'd think her arrogant if he didn't know that, yeah, she's from the most powerful family of witches in North America, and they _are_ still standing after demons and Croats tore through the whole damn country. "You kill the man in white. Got that?"

Dean smiles, tight. "Yes ma'am."

A quick up-and-down glance, and she nods, apparently satisfied. Gestures him toward the door with an imperious little flick of her hand.

Dean trails outside into a bare yard strewn with stray pieces of litter and storm-wreckage. In the centre there's a pyre, built the way John taught Dean and Dean taught Cas. Pete and Ellen lie on the top, side by side, quarters on their eyes, doused in fuel accelerant. The three witches stand back respectfully as they line up, Jo front and centre. For a long moment she simply stares silently down at her mother's lifeless face, then pulls out a box of matches, strikes three in a row, throwing each into the base of the pyre.

Flames lick up the wood and wash across the bodies, crackling and spitting, throwing the thick smell of salt and burning flesh into the air. Jo steps back, and Risa puts an arm around her waist, but she might be holding a marble statue for all the response she gets. On her other side, Theo is crying in earnest now, while Jo watches the fire spread, tearless and expressionless.

Dean remembers how he stood numb and paralysed before his father's burning body, twenty-seven years of love and faith closing his throat. Beside him his brother, who spent his entire life raging at and running from the man, had sobbed and sobbed and sobbed until he was nearly sick. A part of him wishes he could find those tears now himself ( _God knows, Ellen deserves them_ ), but all that's locked away somewhere inside, where it needs to stay.

Because this is on Dean. Dean and ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam, but he's the only one to witness it, the only one to care, the only one to put it right. It's on him to make sure Ellen hasn't died in vain, even if he has to take back Alastair's mantle to do it.

There's a demon waiting inside.

He turns away, heads back to the house. As he opens the door, he looks back in time to see Jo slip away from Risa's arm and walk over to him. She steps inside, tugs him through and shuts the door behind them. "You're going to interrogate the demon, aren't you? I want in."

Everything inside Dean goes very still, all his trains of thought ( _razors and hooks and wire, the words he'd whisper and the way they'd look on the brink of breaking)_ screeching to a halt. "Jo …"

She lifts her chin, defiant. "Your right hand's out of action. You can't do this alone, I mean you physically _can't_."

"Watch me." Once Alastair had Dean go to work while Alastair took the blade to him ( _not in earnest, only a game, practically a tease_ ), plucked the heart from between his ribs and licked it with his venom-barbed tongue. Working one-armed is nothing to that.

Jo crosses her arms, dark eyes narrowed. "I swear, you tell me what to do, you teach me, I'll do just as good as you. I'm already better with knives than you are, come on."

That's not true. Of course it used to be, she's even more of a natural than Sam was, and the both of them could put Dean to shame until Alastair took him in hand. Took him in hand the way Jo's suggesting Dean take _her_ in hand.

"It's not _about_ that, fuck." His left hand is trembling, white-knuckled on the hilt of his knife. "Jo, what you'll see, what I'll become down there … you don't wanna be part of it. You don't."

Her face is a pale mask, rigid and blank, eyes like empty holes. "Don't I?"

Looking at her is like staring into the mirror, and shit, he doesn't know. Hell is on earth and Ellen is dead and what he sees in her daughter he recognises, and God, he never wanted to. But here they are. Here they both are. "Okay," he says ( _yes, I'll do it, let me do it_ ). "We're gonna need holy water, salt, as much as we've got. Needles, syringes, razors, anything like that. And this." He taps the knife at his belt.

"Okay," Jo says, and smiles.

* * *

The demon's tied to a chair. It's wearing a man in his mid twenties, who would be pretty ( _won't stay that way long_ ) if it weren't for the glowing crossroads-red eyes. Kinda distracting, that.

It keeps up a constant stream of foul-mouthed insults while Jo lays out all the tools of the trade on a rickety old table. Dips the blades in holy water, in salt, Dean's demon-killing knife first, and then the ones she brought along from her collection, largest to smallest, and then the scalpels and scissors from their medical kits. Methodical. It's good. Alastair ( _his Dad_ ) would approve.

Dean can't teach her properly, though, not the way Alastair would. He always said you have to be on the receiving end first, that it takes being carved to pieces and stitched back together to truly understand pain. To appreciate the full depth and breadth of it, see it in all its colours, the whole spectrum and not just the reds, easy and obvious. Anyone can see the reds, but it takes ( _artistry_ ) experience to see the rest.

Of course, they can't do that. He can't show her that, not up here, where time and logic are linear. It's a poor imitation, but it'll have to do.

"Right, we'll start with this one." Dean picks up the biggest of Jo's knives, a wickedly curved Bowie, between two fingers. Passes it to her. Turns to the demon. "Last chance. Tell us who you're working for, who stole the Colt. Give us a name, and this can be over right now."

The thing spits at him. "You think I'm scared of you? You think you're gonna break me? Bring it on."

Dean gives it his very best teeth-bared predatory smile. "Oh really? You know who I am?" The demon spits again. "I'm Dean Winchester. I spent forty years downstairs, and you know who I studied under? Alastair. That name mean anything to you?"

All of a sudden, the demon looks uncertain. Still defiant, but wavering, just a little. It doesn't answer him. Doesn't have to.

"You're lying," it hisses.

"We'll see. Oh, and by the way, this lady here?" Dean nods at Jo, and she steps forward, the blade gleaming in her hand. "Your friends killed her mother today." Dean moves to stand behind her, ready to direct her hands, murmur criticism and praise, the way Alastair did for him, when he was still learning. "Okay, the chest first. Here we go…"

* * *

The demon breaks, of course. Everyone ( _except John Winchester, the stuff of heroes_ ) breaks, given the right time and the right pressure.

It doesn't take them that long: only a few hours. Surprising ( _disappointing_ ), really. Then again demons have by definition been broken before, and in the case of minor league crossroads salesmen, not by the Grand Inquisitor, nor even one of his apprentices. The fault lines were already there, just a matter of finding them.

Dean sees it coming, the money shot, the moment it'll all pay off. In the last hour, the demon starts struggling with renewed vigour, screaming louder than ever through its shredded throat, and the whole thing is so very familiar. The final burst of animalistic desperation, and then, when they realise this is a trap that can't be escaped by chewing off a limb, the collapse.

Its eyes stop their mad rolling and simply stare, vacant and bloodshot, and oh yes, the moment's close.

He doesn't tell Jo it's coming. It'll only ruin her focus, and the girl's on a roll. She's good, has a light hand with the blade, all delicacy and precision, where Dean would be more instinctive, expressive. Alastair would say ( _so proud of you, my sweet_ ) she had potential.

When the demon breaks, it breaks all at once. Its chin drops onto its flayed-bare chest and its limbs, straining futilely against the bonds, go slack, and it gives them a name. A name from the past that hits Dean like cold water to the face.

He reaches past Jo and with his good hand yanks the demon's head up by the hair. "What did you say?"

Its words bubble with blood, slurred and lisping around a sliced and salted tongue. "I said … the one you want … she's called Bela. It's the truth, I swear it –"

"Oh, I believe you." Of course. Of fucking _course_ it's Bela, crawling her way up out from the Pit the usual black-eyed way, back to steal the Colt all over again, because history repeats itself and his life has a symmetry that can't be escaped. He might have known.

Jo asks _are we done_ and he tells her _yes_ and holds the thing's head still while she slits its throat. The blood spatters thick and hell-hot down the inside of his arm, and when he looks at Jo and Jo looks at him it's a sudden shock that she has a human face. Scars through her eyebrow and lip and viscera streaked across her forehead where she pushed back her hair, but human nonetheless.

Dean supposes that means he must also be human still.

What good it'll do either of them he doesn't know.

But they're still human and still them, Jo and Dean, and they clean up the tools, pack them away, go back to their grim-faced companions and tell them they have a name, it's done, it's time to leave. The cars are packed up and the way across the bridge opened, and before the two of them get into their two different cars, for a moment they stop, just look at each other.

Before, they might have hugged. Jo might have kissed Dean's cheek, Dean might have messed up Jo's hair. But before, they loved each other, in that particular simple way you love someone you've fought beside so fiercely for so long that tallying up who saved whose life how many times has become meaningless. And that's still there, but now there's something more, something Dean has never shared with anyone whose eyes are neither black-in-black nor bone-white.

They love each other and they hate each other a little, now, and that's familiar too, the circuitous logic of Hell. Where you learn to hate the ones you torture and the ones who put the knife in your hand just as much as you hate yourself for taking it, and the more you hate, the more you love the knife, and the more you love the knife, the more you hate, and round and around it goes, the perpetual motion machine that powers the Pit.

So they don't hug. Don't touch each other. Dean nods, Jo raises a half-salute and Dean climbs into shotgun beside Cas while Jo gets into the pick-up truck beside Risa.

* * *

Night falls as they drive out of New Orleans. It's still much warmer than it was back at Chitaqua, but the temperature is dropping fast.

Dean's jacket is ashes on a pyre and even the sense-memory of Hell running vivid through his veins isn't enough to keep him from shivering. Eventually Cas tires of it, shucks off the coat he scavenged from an abandoned mall a few weeks ago ( _long, like that long lost trenchcoat)_ , and drapes it around Dean's shoulders.

And it's weird, it's so fucking weird, because he's warm enough now but the shivering won't stop. Dried blood and bile and flakes of sulphur are clinging to his fingers, deep under his nails, in the cracks of his ( _soul_ ) skin, he's unclean and feels it, but it's an eighteen-hour drive to the nearest hot shower and how he's gonna last it out is a fucking mystery.

Not just the dirt, the dirt's bad enough ( _always hated being filthy_ ), but it's not just that. Every time he closes his eyes he sees the fires that never go out and the meat-hooks and Alastair's huge sweet-cruel smile and feels the long long twisted fingers caressing his and the razor in his hand and the way it had been _alive_ , a living thing and a _part_ of him –

No no no stop just _stop_.

He bites at his tainted nails and counts mile-markers.

Forty minutes outside of NOLA they pass by a small pack of Croats eating a woman by the roadside. It's fine, they don't attack, the little convoy goes past too quick for that anyway, but she's still alive and she's making this noise. She's making this noise like ( _he used to_ ) the souls used to in Hell.

Croatoan reminds him of the Pit. Reminds him of the days after Castiel had ( _gripped him tight_ ) dragged him back topside, when all he saw when people looked at him was the truth Alastair had shown him – people's civilised faces? Just a mask. He knew what they really were, what lay underneath, and it had black eyes.

Zachariah was right. ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam really did bring Hell to earth.

"Dean," Cas says, and he jumps, flinches violently, hates himself for it. "Dean, you're not in Hell."

Fucking _Cas_. Knows him ( _too well_ ) so fucking well. Dean wants to hit him for that, wants to kiss him for that, can't do either because the stupid idjit's driving. "I was though. Back. Back there."

He regrets it as soon as he says it ( _if you don't say things, they aren't real, can't hurt_ ). Cas looks across at him, brows low over guilty-sad-disappointed squinting eyes. He licks his lips, and Dean doesn't know if he's about to say that it's okay or that it's not, but he knows he can't stand either.

"Don't," Dean says, rough because he doesn't know how else to be. "Cas, don't. I'm not one of your little groupies, ain't nothing you can say can make this better, I don't wanna hear it. Just drive."

Cas's lips thin, and he turns his face away. "Whatever you say, fearless leader."

They drive on in silence.

After a short while, Dean lays his head against the nub of Cas's shoulder. Before Chitaqua, when they had the Impala and drove and drove and drove, sometimes when Dean was wiped out Cas would take the wheel. Dean would lean his head on him like this, and Cas would stroke idly at his cheek, pet his hair, slide a hand under the neck of his shirt, and Dean would shut his eyes and drift.

Cas doesn't touch him. Dean doesn't close his eyes ( _doesn't dare dream_ ). He just watches the miles of blacktop spin away beneath their wheels. Imagines what's left of his ( _humanity_ ) heart ground to dust beneath them.


	9. Made of Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've survived to the end of 2012. The human race limps on into another year.
> 
> Another year – the fourth since the Cage opened and the world began to die.
> 
> Doesn't seem like much to celebrate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for major character death, vague suicidal ideation, somewhat NSFW.

_'Feels like the weight of the world, like God in heaven gave me a turn. Don't cling to me, I swear I can't fix you. Still in the dark, can you fix me?'_

* * *

On New Year's Eve there's a party.

It's insanely fucking freezing outside, been snowing non-stop for three weeks, and Dean would have been more than happy to let the thirty-first of December pass unremarked, like the twenty-fifth and like Thanksgiving, but oh no. Not happening.

Somehow the idea of throwing a party spreads like ( _Croatoan_ ) wildfire through the camp, and so on the night itself they all end up crammed into the largest cabin, the one they've been using as kitchen and canteen since the weather turned. Jaeger produces an honest-to-God record player, and of course out comes the alcohol and the pot and even the pills, and Theo whines until Dean lets him brew up all that's left of their pathetic coffee supply. And it’s a party.

Dean stands on the edges, leaning against the wall with a mug of precious coffee, and watches. The raucous game of Texas Hold 'Em that Rachael's silently winning ( _may only be six but she learnt shooting and cards from the best_ ). Jo and Risa kissing, shot glasses held aloft triumphantly. Cas sitting cross-legged on a table in a haze of smoke, gazing at Lana and Erin as they dance like strung-out hippies, arms waving and eyes closed.

No Kate, no Pete, no Ellen. No Bobby either – within days of their return from New Orleans, he'd insisted on retreating to the empty shell of Singer Salvage. Risa drove him. Dean and Jo had been too shattered ( _and Cas too stoned_ ) to argue.

Dean's not sober, but apart from little Emma and Rachael, he's the nearest in the room to it ( _first time in his life_ ). From here all the revelry seems hollow: the drunken arms-around-shoulders singing, the too-wide smiles, the laughter that verges on hysteria. It reeks of desperation.

Chuck starts a countdown. When it reaches zero the cabin erupts in cheers.

They've survived to the end of 2012. The human race limps on into another year.

Another year – the fourth since the Cage opened and the world began to die.

Doesn't seem like much to celebrate.

Over on the table, Cas tilts his head back to look over at Dean. Pippa passes him a glass of what looks like whiskey and he raises it like a toast, mouths _happy New Year,_ grins slow and lopsided. Dean doesn't even try to fake a smile ( _doesn't lie to Cas anyway, not when he can help it_ ), just stares back, impassive.

After a moment, Cas's mouth twists, cynical. He shakes his head slightly, exasperated, but without the overlay of warmth his exasperation once had ( _you're impossible, he'd say, half-laughing like Sam would when he bitched at Dean)_. Turning to the side, he reaches up and curls a hand round Pippa's neck, draws her down to kiss her on the lips. She pushes into the kiss, leans forward over the table, propped up with one hand on either side of Cas. Jo lets out a piercing wolf-whistle that dissolves into raucous laughter. Dean looks away, out the fogged-up window.

It's not that the girls ( _Cas and the girls_ ) bother him. It's not. It's just – the drink and the drugs and the way Cas is not quite Cas. Not the Cas who was the compass that kept Dean pointed due north after ( _Detroit_ ) Hell, the Cas he'd die for and kill for, the Cas he first loved. When there's a joint in his fingers and a cloudy glass at his side and a faraway gleam in his doe eyes, it's like looking at someone else entirely, someone Dean doesn't even recognise.

He hated that feeling when he looked at his Dad ( _his blood-drinking brother_ ) years ago, and he hates it now when he looks at Cas.

"Hey, you want a lil something in that coffee?" It's Jane, brandishing a bottle of vodka. Never his favourite, even when he was in the mood for it. Dean shakes his head, and she pouts at him. "Oh, c'mon, it's a _party_."

"Yeah, I got that." She giggles, either wasted or just flirty, because that was not that funny. Jane hangs around Cas a fair bit, seems to find his ex-angel existential-whatever rambling as fascinating as everyone else, but she _watches_ Dean far more than she does Cas. Years of flirting his way across the lower forty-eight have honed his radar for this stuff, and right now she is pinging it like crazy, and he just does not have the fucking patience. " _Someone's_ gotta be the goddamn babysitter," he says, curt, and her face falls.

Ted calls her name, and she melts back into the hubbub. Thank God.

Claustrophobia hits Dean all of a sudden. Too many people in too confined a space, and none of them the ones he wants. Too much forced cheer. Just _too much._

He knocks back what's left of the coffee, puts the mug down on the floor. Slips out the cabin door, hunting-quiet.

The cold night air hits him like a wall, burns its way down into his lungs. It's sweet sweet relief after the cabin, warm and humid from the press of bodies. Snowing again, of course, the wind driving it into his face, deep enough on the ground that it's threatening to overtop his boots. His coat and gloves are back inside, and he oughta go get them, but he can hear _Auld Lang Syne_ roared out behind himand he just can't fucking face it.

Another year.

Another year just like the last. Bodies piled so high they don't bother trying to salt-and-burn them. Dead-eyed children behind a chain-link fence in Alabama. The deafening silence of murdered towns, empty cities. The bulletins over the radio, ever fewer and further between. Kate Weiss's brain painting the inside of the Impala. Her wordless six-year-old and her gaunt twelve-year-old watching Dean drive away, shotguns at their sides.

Ellen Harvelle dying long and slow in his arms, on Dean's watch, the way Bill Harvelle died on John Winchester's. Jo's fingers wrapped around the hilt of a knife, Dean's fingers over hers.

Last he heard on the wire from Kansas City, US fatalities stood at two hundred million. Last report he saw before the Internet went down, Croatoan's on every continent but Australasia. Only a matter of time.

Walking without aim, Dean finds himself by the Impala's skeleton. It ( _she_ ) is half-buried, snow drifted almost to the height of the roof on one side. He leans against it, shivering arms wrapped around his torso, thinks that the Marines' armoured cars may be tougher, may guzzle less gas by far, but they'll never be as _right_ as this car. Never know him as well.

He thinks of Sam driving like a madman while Dean bled and bled and bled into the leather after ( _Dad_ ) Azazel ripped him up from the inside out. Of lifting Sam's still-warm body into the backseat. Folding his hands on his stomach, one over the other, the way Sam slept when he was calm, when he felt safe.

The beginning of the end wasn't four years ago, not really, not when you take the birds' ( _angels'_ ) eye view of it. It was two years before that, when Dean got in this car and drove out to a crossroads and back in Bobby's cabin ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam opened his eyes again.

Six years of slow-spreading fractures and quiet decay and a sudden bloody slide into Hell and it wasn't like he wasn't warned.

It's so cold and he wishes so hard he'd listened. Should have listened to Gordon Walker, should have listened to Zachariah, should have listened to his Dad. They warned him over and over and he knew in his head they were right ( _in the paranoid sleepless reaches of the night_ ) but he trusted his liar's heart ( _Sam's heart_ ) instead, and there are some things that just cannot be forgiven.

The wind bites at him, cutting right through flannel and flesh to gnaw at the marrow of his bones like guilt. He paces back and forth alongside the Impala, trying to lose himself in the rhythm, the simple physicality of it. Doesn't work. No matter how fast he goes, forward and back, feet dragging through the snow, his mind won't stop. It's whirring round and around like the unending swing of a pendulum, a gyroscope that'll drive him mad, and its centre of gravity is the car beside him and the memory of a corpse and a crossroads.

He should never have done it. Should have taken the other way out. Should have shot himself ( _the way he'd wanted to, been too chickenshit to_ ) after his brother died and saved the world ( _from Sam_ ) a lot of misery.

Should have, should have, should have.

He's cold and he's alone ( _misses Cas_ ) and above all he's tired. Tired of remembering every low and filthy thing he's done, the mud he's dragged himself and everyone he loves through, of remembering it's all been for nothing. Running to stand still.

This is a battle that Dean's been losing for six years and he can't change the past but there is this one thing he _can_ do.

The other way out.

He leans his head back, stares up into the mouth of the snowstorm, and yells, " _Michael_!"

The wind rises to a sudden soulless shriek, and there's snow in his eyes, blinding him, too-white, and for a moment Dean thinks _yes_ ( _Sam said_ yes), thinks _this is it_. In just a heartbeat, he'll be gone ( _chained to a comet_ ) and the war will be won.

Then nothing.

No burning light. No voice that shakes the earth and sets his ears bleeding. Nothing.

"Fuck! Michael! Come on, come on, you son-of-a-bitch. Michael! I'm saying _yes_ , goddammit, _yes!_ _Yes,_ you win, come get me! _Michael!_ "

" _Michael_!" He screams it this time. _Screams_ it, a noise he never knew he could make, every fibre of his body behind it, tendons cording in his neck, red dots dancing over his vision.

When he stops, it feels as though he's run a marathon, gone twelve rounds with Ali. Gasping for air that's agony when it comes. Shaking and not just his arms now but whole-body tremors, shivering like he hasn't in years. _Years_.

Michael has to come. He has to. Dean was born for this. Castiel was sent to Hell for this. He has to come.

"Michael! _Yes!_ Fucking _yes_ , okay? Michael!"

His eyes are wet and the water is freezing on his cheeks and he's not crying because he doesn't ( _feel_ ) cry. He doesn't. But he is.

Can't be happening. None of this can be happening, none of this can have happened. He can't have allowed any of this ( _Sam, Ellen dying, Jo's blank face, silent little Rachael, Cas falling_ , Sam) to happen. Not without making it right.

It has to be possible to make things right. It _has_ to be.

"Michael! _Yes_ , Michael, _yes_. _Yes_! Michael!"

It turns into a mantra.

He's not pacing anymore because it's got too hard ( _feels like swimming through concrete)_ and he can't seem to make his limbs move ( _weigh ten thousand tons_ ). Just leaning against the Impala takes enough of his energy, and he wants to sleep, but it's important that he doesn't, although he doesn't really remember why, and he can’t _think_. This is all he has, repeating himself over and over and over until the words are nothing more than mindless sounds with no end in sight.

"Michael, Michael, Michael, _yes_ , Michael, _yes_ …"

There's salty red warmth on his lips and his teeth are frozen-aching down to the roots when the thought breaks through his torpid mind like dawn: _Michael is not coming._ There is no way out except _through_ , to keep on walking.

But his legs are so heavy and he doesn't think he has it in him to take another step.

Dean sits down. Leans back against the Impala, where the tyre used to be before he hamstrung her. The snow is soft and warm against his skin. He's so very tired.

He closes his eyes.

* * *

It's past two in the morning when Jo realises Dean isn't standing in his corner, grumpily drinking coffee, anymore. Isn't, in fact, anywhere in the cabin.

When she goes to ask Cas if Dean told him he was leaving, and he says no, last time he saw Dean was round about midnight, she doesn't worry about it. They're all of them pretty merry right now, and Dean's been easy to overlook all night, hiding away and balefully refusing to have any fun. Cas has been distracted, Jo's been distracted, they'd never notice him leaving. No big deal.

The party's winding down now, but Risa's still going strong – smirking at Jo from where she's playing darts with Ted and Theo. Jo has a mind to go over there and kiss that smile straight off her face. Oh yeah. Sounds like a plan.

Then she notices a chair under the table Cas is sitting on. Notices Dean's heavy grey winter coat hanging from it, battered leather gloves folded over the back of the chair.

Negative forty degrees out, and Dean left his coat and gloves behind. _Now_ she's worried.

Course, it's not even a five minute walk to Dean and Cas's cabin. But then there's the way Dean's been since New Orleans – like he's here, but somewhere else as well – and, yeah, Jo's worried.

She beckons for Risa and Theo –both of them good in a tight spot, and not as trashed as they could be – and the looks on their faces when she runs things by them tell her she's right to worry. The three of them start pulling their own outdoor gear on, and then Cas proclaims he's going along with them.

Oh, hell no. Definitely not. In Jo's opinion it's a minor miracle the man's still mostly upright and awake. Absolute last thing they need is that idjit staggering drunkenly around in a goddamn blizzard. Dean'd ( _flay)_ kill her if she even considered it. "No. No, you go home, case he makes it back there, okay?"

Thank fuck, Cas accepts that without too much argument. Doesn't protest when a very far-gone Lana demands to know why they're leaving and Jo spins some bullshit excuse. Once outside, they split up to cover more ground, and he heads off agreeably in the direction of his cabin, Theo supervising.

When the party started, round about ten o'clock, it had been snowing in fierce flurries, fits and starts. Now the wind has picked up even further, driving straight into Jo's face, and the snow is falling thick and fast, as heavy a storm as she's ever been in.

This just keeps getting better and better.

She bears toward the southern perimeter of the camp, where that ancient gorgeous Chevy Dean loves so much is up on bricks. If he ain't out at the shooting range – where Risa's looking – or sat on the roof of one of the cabins, chances are the man's down there. If he's not – if he went further – crossed the fence – Jo sets her jaw, digs her hands deeper into her fleece-lined pockets. Dean's _Dean_ , but he's still only one man. If he's gone, if he bugged out, if he's bolted – well, she'll just have to deal.

Fuck, she wishes her momma were here.

Going south has her headed face-on into the blizzard, and even with her hood tugged down over her eyes as far as it will go, it's hard to see. Hard to _move_ , too, the wind fighting her every step. Damn it all, why Minnesota, why couldn't they have holed up somewhere in fucking California?

It takes longer than it should, but eventually Jo gets there. She sees the fence first – shaking in the wind but standing tall – then sees the car – almost swallowed up in snow, flashes of black and chrome peeking out here and there – and then – heart in her mouth – sees Dean. He's sitting on the ground, huddled against his car, blanketed by snow, up to his chest in the stuff.

Jo shouts out to him, but the wind snatches the words from her mouth and he doesn't move. She closes the distance between them as fast as she can. Feels like she's in one of those nightmares where something chases her and time slows to a crawl and no matter how she tries she can't break into a run. What she wouldn't give right now for a proper _fight_ , an enemy she could stab or shoot or skin –

Dean's head is lolling to one side bonelessly, his eyes shut. His face is deathly pale, his cracked lips a pallid blue beneath the frozen blood. There are ice crystals suspended in his lashes. He's not shivering. When she grabs his shoulder, shakes it, he twitches slightly, nothing more.

"Come on, come on, don't you do this to me," she hisses. Jo's strong, but Dean has nine inches and at least fifty pounds on her, and right now he's dead weight. With the best will in the world, that just ain't gonna work. "Dean. Dean!" She tugs her right glove off with her teeth, gets the tender flesh of his earlobe between the bitten-ragged nails of her thumb and index finger, and pinches savagely.

This time his head lifts. His eyes flutter and open – dark instead of pale, all pupil. They struggle to focus on her, sliding away, lids drooping, but they're open. "Mmmmm? Jo…?"

" _Yes_ , you fucking idjit. Now come on, we've gotta get you inside." She shoves her glove back on, digs the worst of the snow off of his sprawled legs, tugs on his nose when he starts to nod. Gets his arm – fingers violently red – around her shoulders, drags him upright. He lists heavily against her, and her knees nearly buckle, back bowing under his weight.

Come on, Joanna Beth, you can fucking do this.

The first step is the hardest, and then the second and the third, but eventually they get into a rhythm, Dean just awake enough to put one foot in front of the other. If the wind wasn't behind them it'd be an impossibility, and as it is they nearly fall every few steps, but they're moving. Jo's thighs and back and shoulders are burning, and Dean's head is drooping, breathing shallow, and it's impossible not to think of him carrying her momma's body through New Orleans, but they're moving.

When they're in sight of Cas's cabin, Theo finds them, comes in on Dean's other side, and the last few yards come easy, easy. Then they're spilling into light and shelter – fuck, it's a blessing to be out that godawful wind – and Dean collapses onto the bed. Cas is there in an instant, running covetous hands over his face, his hair, his arms, cooing some stoned nonsense in his ear.

"Go get him something to drink, something to eat, warm not hot," Jo orders Theo, and the kid scoots, shutting the door behind him. She turns to the mess of limbs on the bed. "I'll get him out of those clothes. You – take yours off, we'll put him in 'em, warm him up." So far's she can tell, there's no distinction between Cas's clothes and Dean's, anyway.

The logic takes a moment to get through to Cas, but then he nods and starts stripping. Sits behind Dean, propping him up while Jo manhandles him out of the layers of heavy, snow-wet fabric. He's unresisting, skin alarmingly chill to the touch, but his breathing's getting deeper, steadier. Once he's in Cas's jeans and loose black sweater he starts to shiver a little again, to sit up on his own as the warmth leaches into him.

"What – Jo, wha' happened?" Looking around dazedly, his voice hoarse and slurred. The massively dilated pupils have shrunk, and his eyes look like chips of translucent green pond-ice. Along his hairline the thin scar from Detroit, normally almost invisible, stands out starkly pink against blue-white skin.

She tugs off his boots – snow inside, great – and wet-through socks. His feet are mottled purple. "You tell me. You walked out in a fucking blizzard without your coat and near froze to death, the fuck were you thinking?"

"I was – I was tryin'." Dean's head falls back against Cas's bare shoulder, and Cas kisses at the side of his throat. Those two. "I was trying to say _yes_. To Michael."

Hand to God, Jo's heart stops beating. It just – stops.

"But he wouldn't –" Cas has pulled away, staring at Jo horrified, high as he is. Oblivious, Dean lifts his head, rambles on. "Son'f-a-bitch didn't show. I was tryin', but he –"

Jo hits him, backhanded across the face. Hard.

He jerks, full-bodied. Fresh blood trickles from his cracked lips. Then he shudders, and – there's this _change_. His face changes, and all the hairs down the back of Jo's neck rise as the fiercely competent hunter melts away, and he stares up at her like a child. For all the world like a child – he looks so young, young as Rachael – shining eyes huge, hair standing up in damp spikes, face naked and guilty and trusting.

"You never say that again," Jo tells him, voice low and sharp. Her heart pounds sickly against her ribs. Michael – the Archangel supposed to wear Dean's skin to raze Lucifer in Heaven's literal scorched-Earth strategy. What this means – what'll happen if anyone knows Dean – Dean tried to give up – the panic. Chitaqua's barely holding on to sanity as is, if anyone finds out _Dean_ thinks they're done for – No. _No._ "You _never_ talk about that again, you hear me? Not to me, not to Cas, not to anyone. We clear?"

No response. She slaps him again, the other cheek. A little lighter, but only a little because this time she's thinking, _fuck you_. Fuck you, you don't get to check out. You don't get to bring ( _me_ ) us this far and then bail. Fuck that. " _Are we clear._ "

Dean looks up at her and nods, twice, quick. "Yessir," he says.

* * *

At the end of January, just after Dean's birthday, the weather gets a little milder. Enough of the snow melts for Jo and Dean to brave the roads and risk the drive out to Sioux Falls.

Bobby is not pleased to see them.

They find him on the porch, unshaven and wrapped up in blankets, hip flask in his lap, shotgun at the ready. He lowers it when he realises they aren't Croats, looking almost disappointed. The moment Dean opens his mouth, he says flatly, "No."

"You don't even know what we came for!" Jo protests.

He gives her a sour look. "Yeah, I do, you want me to go back to Chitaqua so y'all can babysit me. Well, I ain't going. Man's got a right to die in his own home."

"Jesus, you old drama queen, none of this _dying_ talk. We drive all this way and you aren't even gonna offer us a drink?" Dean spreads his arms, gives his best approximation of a grin. Bobby glares, mutters something under his breath about _goddamn Winchesters_ , but he does an about turn in his wheelchair, leads them inside. As they follow, Dean hisses in Jo's ear, "Go for his pride."

The house is warmer than Dean expected, warm enough for him to take off his gloves, though the place is even grubbier and messier than he's ever seen it, which is saying something. Bobby produces a pair of not-too-filthy mugs from somewhere and pours them each a liberal measure of what smells like old-school moonshine whisky, passes them out. "Fuck me, what in hell's name did you do to your _hands_ , boy?"

Oh, right. "Just a little frostbite. Long story." Dean can feel Jo's gaze on him, flushes. Rubs at the blood blisters spread out under the skin of his fingers. "Looks a lot worse than it feels."

Bobby narrows his eyes, but Jo gets in before he can start dragging Dean over the coals. "Listen, we need your help, Bobby, okay? Hunting down Bela, we need you in on this."

"Oh yeah, because the two of you can't rustle up a tracker spell. Gimme a break." He snorts derisively, takes a pull from his flask.

"Already tried that, she's warded against them. We gotta get inventive." Jo gives Bobby a pointed look.

"Yeah, come on, you know you're the brains of this operation," Dean adds, and Jo grins, blink-and-you'll-miss-it.

But Bobby lets out a bitter bark of a laugh. "So go get a demon and tickle it till it talks. That worked for you the last time, didn't it?"

And that – Dean cannot think of a goddamn thing to say to that. He's kept functioning the last couple months by taking what happened in New Orleans, what they _did_ in New Orleans, and shoving it in a box and never thinking about it ( _not in the light of day_ ). Certainly never talking about it. Don't think about it, don't mention it, it's not real. Same goes for Jo, far as he can tell, an unspoken mutual code. And now the son-of-a-bitch has to go shove it in their faces, and just what the fuck does he expect from them?

Bobby half-laughs again, but there is absolutely no mirth in his voice, on his face. In twenty-five years Dean's never seen the man look this grim. Not ever. "Cat got your tongue, huh?"

"Don't give me this shit. Do not fucking give me this shit," Jo says. Her voice is quiet, controlled. Normally when she's pissed she's a screamer, and that's easy enough to handle: Dean's been refereeing knock-down, drag-out shouting matches all his life. Whatever new flavour of Jo-fury is coming, that he doesn't know, and doesn't want to deal with.

"All right, fine," he says, loud. Steps in between them, gets up in Bobby's face. "What happened in NOLA happened, okay. You don't like it, you don't like how we do our thing, you don't like us, period? Whatever, I don't care. That's not the point. Point is, Sioux Falls is lousy with Croats and you're coming back to Chitaqua, end of."

"I'm going nowhere, boy," Bobby snaps.

He goes to wheel off, but Dean grabs the armrests of his chair, holds it in place. "Sorry, wasn't a suggestion."

Bobby's face purples with rage. "You'd better not –"

He's interrupted by a loud clang-crash – something out in the scrap-yard – and a high, panicked cry, cut off by a hoarse snarl.

Croat. Or rather, Croat _s_ , because the damn things are like ants, there's never only one. Dean's handgun is out of its holster and in his hand quicker than breathing, Jo's as well, and Bobby's got that shotgun, but the assault rifle is out in the car. _Fuck_.

Jo follows as Dean heads to the door, glances around, slips out onto the porch. Nothing to be seen, but a yard piled high with wrecked cars isn't exactly short on hiding places. This is fucking _fantastic_. "I'm gonna make a break for the car," he whispers. "You hang back."

"See you on the other side," she whispers back, kicks his ankle gently.

It's maybe a hundred yards round to the front of the house where they're parked. He takes it as fast as he can while keeping his footfalls light, like stalking a black dog, and it's still agony. Instinct is screaming at him to run. When he rounds the corner of the house, he hears the crunch of footfalls in snow from behind him. The inevitable ambush is here and it's almost a goddamn relief.

Dean breaks into a sprint, glances backwards ( _five, two in the lead_ ) and fires, one-two-three ( _reflex alone, no time to aim_ ). Losing his balance on a patch of ice sends him sliding straight into the side of the car, right shoulder creaking in protest. He spins around, just time to gank a Croat inches away from sinking its teeth in him. Blood in the air ( _mouth shut, keep your mouth shut)_ , on the snow, two more coming at him – bullets in them both and that's only one left in the chamber now.

He can hear more gunshots, shattering glass, inhuman screaming, wood splintering, Jo's voice – " _A little help, Winchester!"_ – as he gropes behind him for the car door. It opens and he ducks down behind it. Handgun back in his holster, he seizes the rifle and the ammo belt, cocks it and brings it around to shoot another three Croats as they come running round from behind the house.

Before he can breathe, a fucking pack of the things come swarming up over the fence from the property next door. One of them manages to get within swinging distance with a bloodstained baseball bat ( _Christ, they're fast when they get the bug_ ) before he takes it down, shrieking as it goes. Between the screaming and the gunfire, they may as well light up a beacon for every fucking Croat in this town.

They need to be gone, like, yesterday.

As Dean runs back around to the porch, a woman comes staggering out from the scrap-yard, sobbing, jacket torn to shreds and blood everywhere. Not dead or a Croat yet but she will be soon enough. He shoots her. Jo is nowhere to be seen, the back door torn from its hinges and in pieces on the floor, bloody footprints leading into the house. For a moment he hesitates ( _assault rifle in an enclosed space, not a great idea_ ), then a bitten-off roar from within makes up his mind.

He darts inside and Jo almost runs right into him. "Dean, thank God – move, let's move –"

"Wait, wait – Bobby?"

She pauses, standing in the ruined doorway, breathing heavily, gun in her hand, scoping the yard in front of her. "He – the bastards jumped us. He got bit. I shot him." She glances back at Dean, and the fierce blankness of her face is twin to the emptiness where his grief should be. "We have to go."

Okay. Yeah, okay.

He nods sharply, clicks his tongue twice, _lead on_. Covers her as they break for the car, dropping another two Croats on the way.

There's a half-inch splinter of wood lodged in the flesh of Jo's left palm, so Dean drives. Gets them out of Sioux Falls fast as he dares, thanking his lucky stars ( _hah_ ) for snow chains and four-wheel drive and Jo, poised at the passenger side window with the rifle.

Once they're on the highway, she stashes it in the backseat again ( _pistol reloaded and ready in her lap_ ), gets the first-aid kit from the glove compartment and sets to work on her hand with tweezers and iodine. Dean drums his fingers restlessly against the steering wheel, rubs at the ache in his forever-fucked right shoulder. He craves something desperately ( _a drink a fuck a kiss)_ , but he doesn't know what.

Neither of them says a word, the whole way back to Chitaqua.

* * *

By the time they make it back, the sun is already sinking behind the mountains but it's not quite dark. Cas meets them, hauls the gates open as Dean drives through. He's remarkably steady on his feet, steadier than he was that morning, and if he's not quite sober ( _never is these days_ ), he's within sight of it at least.

Dean climbs out, goes to help Cas push the gates shut while Jo takes the rifle out and pulls a protective tarpaulin over the car. When the gates are closed and padlocked, Cas leans against them, panting, and looks from Dean to Jo and back again. "Where the hell is Bobby," he says, and it comes out flat and dark and hardly a question at all.

He knows.

Dean says simply, "Dead."

Cas stares. Not like he used to stare, all frightening insight and intent, but like a human. Staring in shock. Why he's shocked is beyond Dean. A year of Croatoan and a body count in nine figures is enough to wipe away any novelty death might once have had. "What? _How_?"

He gives Cas the run-down the way he has countless times across the last four years, like any other job gone balls up. "We got ambushed. Croats. He was bitten. Jo shot him." He steps away from the gates, brushes the snow from his gloves. "Only thing to do. You know how it is."

"It was quick," Jo offers.

For a long moment Cas keeps on staring, at Dean, at Jo, and then, abrupt and apropos nothing, he throws his head back and laughs. The sound of it is horrible, half-hysterical and rotten at the core. It makes Dean itch on the inside. "Stop that, Cas, Jesus."

"You really don't care, do you?" The awful laughter quiets, thank _fuck_ , but Cas is looking at him now with eyes wet with actual tears and that's almost worse. His eyes are wide and sad and shining and his lips are curling and he spits the words out. "Neither of you – you just don't fucking care. Bobby, Ellen, Kate – you don't give a damn about any of them. Unbelievable. Unbe-fucking-lievable."

"You can shut your mouth," Jo says in that new cold quiet voice.

Cas shakes his head, laughs sickly again. He pushes away from the gates, heads off up the track into Chitaqua proper. "I am far too sober for this, fucking _hell_."

Dean watches him go. His heart is pounding, but still he doesn't _feel_ anything. Nothing but a sharp irritation at Cas throwing a tantrum when even the goddamn six-year-old in camp knows better than to pull that crap. "What even was that?" he wonders aloud.

In reply, Jo leans to one side and spits eloquently into the snow. She tosses him the rifle, which he catches automatically, and stalks off westwards along the fence towards the shooting range. No doubt intending to throw her knives until it gets too dark to see.

And normally he'd join her – there's something therapeutic in target practice– but he's had enough of that for one day. Besides, doesn't seem like she wants company, and he gets that. The thought of having to pull on some face, hold up his end of the conversation, act like he's some fucking civilian ( _way he'd walked around after Castiel dragged him topside, pretending he couldn't see Hell behind every face_ ), well. It just ain't happening. Not tonight.

It takes two minutes to bring the assault rifle back to the cabin where they store the hardware, and then for lack of anywhere else to go he retreats to his cabin. His and Cas's cabin. It's cold, and the smell of Cas makes it feel even emptier than it is, but it's quiet. He sits at the table and cleans his favourite gun, then his shotgun, and as always the ancient ritual of it soothes him. When the guns are done he considers the knives but ( _he's thinking of Hell and no no not good_ ) can't be bothered.

The battered paperback copy of _Slaughterhouse Five_ hefilched from Erin's stash ispropped open on the bedside table where he left it the night before. And he loves that book, must have read it five times at least, but that's another thing that ain't happening tonight.

In the end he just lies down on the bed. Coat and gloves off, rest of his clothes on, even the boots. He used to fucking hate it when Cas did that, shoes on the bed, but he can't remember how to care. Lying on his back, he looks up at the grain of the dark wooden ceiling over him. Looks at the patterns that are really only there in his mind. That's what humans do: make themselves see patterns, see meanings, where there are none. The brain won't rest otherwise. ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam told him that once.

He lies there for a long time, motionless save for his breathing. It's like being insomniac. Like waking up in a pine box.

Bobby's dead and he should feel more. Should feel _something_. He ought to be freaking out and breaking down, even if it's only inside. The way he was after his Dad died, when even if he didn't cry and didn't talk about it, inside the echoes went on and on and never stopped. Like the waves on a pool after a stone drops into it, one moment rippling out to touch everything.

It was ever-present, then, the pain, a song he couldn't dislodge from his head. Now there's just white noise, blanketing everything like the snow that nearly killed him. And sure, his Dad was his Dad and Bobby was Bobby ( _gentler, maybe, kinder, but never had the measure of Dean the way Dad did)_ , but still. Still.

This means something and he doesn't know if it's bad or good but it'll at least be useful.

He's approaching that not-quite-sleep floating stage when Cas comes in.

True to his word, he's well out of firing range of sober, humming to himself and swaying where he stands and giggling when he nearly topples over in the process of taking his boots off. He throws them onto the pile he made of his long coat and jacket, then flops onto the bed and crawls up to lie on his back beside Dean, very close but not quite touching.

"Dean," he says, not slurring but louder than normal, his voice drifting here and there. "Dean. I'm sorry 'bout earlier, okay? I was just – I was just. I'm so tired, I get so fucking tired of it all, you know?"

"Yeah," Dean says, quiet. "I'm tired too."

Cas turns his head to look at Dean, and Dean turns his. They're nose-to-nose in the gloom. Cas's hair is mussed and his breath sweet and pungent and his lips bitten, and he's so goddamn beautiful it makes no sense. Everything's ugly nowadays and it makes no sense that Cas is the exception.

He remembers Redruth, Iowa, the vanguard of Croatoan, and kissing Cas for the first time that night.

The memory is sour on his tongue and he turns his head to look back up at the ceiling again. They lie like that for some time, and then Cas rolls onto his side, shifting closer. Dean doesn't move away. Cas kisses his neck, the sensitive spot at the crook of it, and one hand slides up under his shirts to curl possessively over his heart. In spite of everything, it feels good, and Dean's hand tangles in Cas's warm hair, holds him there. Pushes his leg between Cas's, their ankles hooking together, the sole of Cas's bare foot icy against his shin.

The lips on his throat become less gentle, and then teeth scrape over the point of his pulse and Dean groans. He feels Cas's mouth curve up in a smirk, Cas's hips press hard against his own, Cas's callus-rough fingertips brushing over his nipple, down his ribs and his stomach. The touch is barely a tease right now, because Cas is a little shit when he wants to be, but Dean knows what comes after. Knows from experience. His blood is hot with anticipation.

Dean twists his fingers tighter in Cas's hair, pulls at it, and Cas hums approval, heel of his hand pressing down on the crotch of Dean's jeans. When Dean arches up into the touch, Cas lifts his head, just a little, enough to look at him.

"You there, baby?" he breathes. Grins lax and dirty, cheeks flushed and lips bruised, eyes glazed over.

He's high as anything and he looks freaking _debauched_ , looks nothing like ( _Dean's Cas, his compass, his anchor_ ) himself. And fuck, fuck, he's hot as hell like this and Dean wants so bad he can hardly breathe, but he also desperately wants the ( _real_ ) old Cas. Wants him not even for sex or any of that, just for _him_ , the heavy quietness of his presence, misses him so much it hurts. Hurts right in the deep-downs like he misses ( _Sam_ ) his Mom, and laughing in the car on the open road, and living in a world that didn't need saving. Hurts the way there aren't words for.

That Cas is gone, though, and the Dean who first loved him is gone too, and all that's left is _them_.

He grabs Cas by the collar and pulls him down, kisses him, open-mouthed and fierce. Trying to drown in him. With his other hand gets hold of Cas's belt, hauls him over to lie fully on top of him, and Cas gets with the programme, hips bucking down against Dean's. Not teasing anymore, no sir.

It's too cold to get naked, but that doesn't matter. They've done it like this enough times, and truth be known Dean's always had a fondness for the quick-and-nasty nature of the good old half-clad fuck. He doesn't lose himself in it, not the way he used to, and it's not quite what he wants, not really, but it's close. It's ( _all he's gonna get_ ) enough.

After it's done, they clean up quick and quiet. Cas swaps his jeans for an old pair of sweatpants that used to be Dean's, back when Cas's clothes and Dean's were still two separate things, that Cas wears as pyjamas now. Dean doesn't even bother with that, barely summons up the energy to pull his boots off. They lie down side-by-side, untouching. Dean's exhausted to the core, but he expects not to be able to sleep ( _old friend insomnia's been visiting_ ). This time, though, when he closes his eyes, he knows nothing more.

* * *

When Dean wakes, the cabin is so cold it's a shock each time he breathes. It's just light enough that he can see his breath steaming in the air. Weather must've taken a turn for the worse again.

Beside him, Cas is snoring faintly. He's sprawled out on his back, one knee pressing into Dean's thigh. It occurs to Dean suddenly that it’s been weeks, maybe months, since he saw Cas asleep sitting up against the headboard. It used to freak Dean out a little, when they were on the road and then at Chitaqua, and now he's finally sleeping like a normal person Dean misses it.

What a mess. What a goddamn mess.

Dean's all the way awake, and that's it for sleep tonight. He slides off the bed, tugs on his boots, gets his coat and gloves. Nothing worse than lying awake in the dark. The door hinges squeak as he goes out, and Cas stirs but doesn't wake.

Outside it's crisp and still, quiet as the grave. There's a thin layer of frost crusted over the snow, snapping and crunching under his boots. Chitaqua could look like a scene from a Christmas card, if you didn't know the truth.

Maybe he'll go sit on what's left of the hood of the Impala, have a chat with his baby, but then again, that didn't exactly end well last time he tried it. His fingers are still red and smarting. Besides, ain't like she's gonna talk back. Nah, the car's out.

Instead he clambers up to sit on the cabin roof. The snow and ice makes it slippy, but he's climbed worse in his time. Least there's nothing fanged chasing him this time.

It's a cloudy night, and the overcast sky has that strange almost-light reflected over it from the thick layer of snow. There are no stars, but there's the white-topped cabin roofs and the great shadows of the mountains rearing up around them. The emptiness of the landscape, the clean taste of the frozen air, the silence. If it ain't quite star gazing ( _with Sam_ ) under the vast Great Plains sky, it's close enough.

He's been sitting there a few minutes when Jo comes walking out through the camp, hands shoved in her pockets, trapper hat pulled down over her blonde hair. She's headed in his direction, and when she gets a little closer, she whistles twice on the same note, his signal. The sound is high and pure and goes echoing dully off the walls and the mountains. Dean whistles down-up back at her, raises a hand in acknowledgement.

Jo makes her way over to his cabin, calls up softly, "Mind if I join?"

"Come on up." It's a bit more of a struggle for her, she's shorter than he is, and he leans down to help pull her up onto the peak of the gently sloping roof. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah. Figured you'd be the same." From one of her coat pockets she produces a metal lighter engraved with a Devils' Trap ( _present from Bobby, Sam had one identical_ ) and cigarettes. Not hand-rolled ones, an actual pack of actual Marlboros. She shakes one out, takes it, offers the pack to Dean. "Want one? Been saving 'em for a rainy day."

Well, it certainly is that. "Alright," he says, and reaches over as she snaps the lighter. He's never been a proper smoker, only did it to keep company, not like his father ( _or his brother_ ), who'd go months without one but then get through more than a pack a day when stressed. Still, it's been a long time and the caustic taste of the blue smoke scratches some of that inner itch where he's been craving things he can't have.

"You and Cas kissed and made up, then?" Jo says.

"Guess so."

She tilts her head back, exhales in a long rush, looks at him sideways. "The fuck was up with him earlier?"

Dean snorts, rubs at the bruise under his jaw. "Don't ask me what goes on in that freak head of his, I dunno. I don't get him. Never have."

They sit quietly for what feels a long time. Their breathing is the only sound, the smouldering ends of the cigarettes glowing like fireflies in the dark.

Finally, Jo says, "Look, I kinda – I just feel like, with Bobby and all. That was a pretty cold decision I made back there. Like, I shot Kate back in the summer, but that was different, she was about to rip my fucking face off. This, it just feels cold. You know?"

Dean takes a long deep drag, shakes his head. "Hell, Jo, you made the right call. Once you get bitten … better to go out clean than to turn, gotta be. You did right. You did."

The corner of her mouth crooks up in a tight almost-smile. "It just doesn't make it a whole lot easier to sleep at night, is all."

"I hear you. I do." God knows he spent enough of his life doubting every last judgement call, slowly tallying up every mistake and every loss until he was drowning in the arithmetic of it. He almost remembers what that was like.

It strikes him suddenly that Jo is twenty-seven. Just a shade younger than he was when he brought ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam back from the dead and doomed them all. If he had been as strong as she is, then – well. Suffice to say they'd not be smoking on a rooftop at the end of the world right now.

Pointless to think about it. He was weak, and it's done, and now it's time to sleep in the bed he made.

Another aching long pause. Dean watches the stillness of the mountains, the stark bare fingers of the trees. Thinks idly about perhaps hunting deer, or rabbits, or whatever else is out in the woods. They'll need meat, and the fur might yet come in handy, and the days when he'd puke at the thought of skinning and butchering ( _a person_ ) an animal are long gone. Beside him Jo is restless, fidgeting. Always looking this way and that, adjusting her hat and her gloves, her hair, tapping ash from her cigarette, passing it hand to hand, rubbing at the place her wrist broke two years back ( _werewolf pack)_ and pains her still ( _like his goddamn shoulder_ ).

Every now and then she opens her mouth, almost starts to say something, and shuts it again. He doesn't ask, doesn't push it. If it needs to be said, it'll get said. Jo's straight-up like that.

And then she does. Staring down into her gloved palms, she says, faltering but clear, "You ever think our parents – y'know, Bobby, my Momma – if they could see, I mean _really_ see what we've done, what we do, they'd just. Hate what we turned into?"

It's so unexpected it forces honesty from him almost before he realises it. More honesty than he'd ever allow if it weren't for the silent darkness and the cold clean air and the sense that they could be the only two real people left in the world.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think that all the time. I mean, my Dad? I can just imagine what he'd say, his _face_ , shit." If he ever know how much Dean let happen. How much he didn't do. How much he did ( _Daddy's little girl, he broke in thirty_ ).

Dean rubs at his mouth, composes himself. "But we do what we gotta do. That's all. We do what we have to do." John Winchester was a better man for a better time, but above all, that's what he taught his son – _you do what you have to do._ It took him far too long but Dean gets it now.

You do what you have to do, because no-one else will do it for you, and someone has to. Someone has to.

Jo nods. "They never really got it, did they? Momma, she was at Atlanta, sure, but she never got her head round it, not like we did. What it is we're dealing with." She looks up at him, lips thin, eyes gleaming fierce. "Shit, you can't go up against the Devil and expect to keep your hands clean, right?"

And God, it's relief beyond words to hear someone else say it. She went down to Hell with him in NOLA, she dragged him back from the ice that night they never speak of ( _not to me, not to Cas, not to anyone_ ), and she knows what he knows. That there's no other way out, no cheat codes, no-one coming to save them. There will be no _deus ex machina_ this time. Nothing and no-one stands between ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer and the world but them.

"Right. We're all there is. It's on us. And you know, in twenty-five years, whatever's left of the human of the human race? They ain't gonna give a damn about us making the calls that we do, killing folks, torturing, what the fuck ever. All that's gonna matter is we wasted Lucifer, and everything else?"  Dean gestures with his cigarette at the cabins, the mountains ( _where they burned Kate's bones_ ) and everything beyond, at himself and Jo. "Bobby, Ellen, Pete, Kate, me, you? Collateral damage."

"Ends gotta justify the means." Gone is the hesitation, the tremor of uncertainty in Jo's voice. She flicks the butt of her cigarette into the snow beneath them, lights up another, grinning with dark humour. "Someone has to do this, guess we're just shit out of luck that it has to be us."

"Yeah, sounds about right." When she offers the pack to him again Dean debates it for a moment, then figures what the hell. He takes one, lights it, inhales, tips his head back and looks at the featureless sky above as he exhales. Doesn't stop you from being able to fight the way being drunk or stoned does, and they're out of caffeine, and it ain't like he's gonna be around long enough to catch lung cancer.

The tail end of that thought reminds him of the final months of the year his deal was coming due, his brother smoking frenetically, telling him _those things'll kill you, kill you_ slow, _it's no way to go._

He nudges Jo with his elbow, says quickly, "Listen. I want you to promise me something, okay? If we're out there, and I get bit, I want you to shoot me."

She gives him a sideways look, eyes narrow. "You won't get bit."

Like he's never heard that weight of denial before. Like he's never heard it on his own voice. He grips her arm, shakes her just a little. "Just promise me. I want you to do it. Not Cas, not Risa, you. One 'tween the eyes, back of the neck, execution style. And then you get ahold of the Colt and go do the same to my brother. Alright?"

Jo stares at him, inscrutable, then nods. "Alright. And you – you do the same for me."

"Deal." They seal it old-school style, spitting in their palms before they shake. When it's done, something inside Dean relaxes, like letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

Some of the tension that's hummed between them since New Orleans has been released, vanishing into the air like so much vapour. It'll never be completely gone – Dean knows better than to think the bloody bond of teacher and pupil can ever be undone ( _nor should it_ ) – but they're in accord again. United. 

Beside him, Jo shifts, tugs her hat off and runs gloved fingers through her tangled hair. Says in her brisk down-to-business voice, "How the fuck _are_ we gonna track down this Bela, anyway? Not like we've got much in the way of leads, is it?"

Dean smirks at her slyly. "Well, I guess we find us a demon and tickle it till it talks."

For a moment she gives him the patented Harvelle death glare, and then they both crack up.


	10. Breaking Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The water's cold, and he jumps when it splashes on his hands. He thinks suddenly of Arizona years ago, the suffocating heat, how ( _Castiel_ ) Cas had ( _saved him again_ ) stitched him up and brought him water, brought him ice, cool and delicious.
> 
> As he goes back into their cabin, the first sight of Cas laid out across rumpled blankets makes something twist inside him, sweet and painful. Just the sight of him – on the bed they share in the cabin they share, the both of them still alive and together after all these long years – it's some sort of a miracle, really.
> 
> "Sorry there's no ice." Dean runs his fingers gently through the hair curling at Cas's nape. Gonna be needing a haircut soon. "I would've brought you some, but we got none, so."
> 
> Cas gives him a blank, eyebrows raised _what-the-fuck-Dean_ look. "Why would I want ice? It's, what, fifty degrees out."

_'The sooner we realise: we cover ourselves with lies, but underneath we're not so tough. Love is not enough.'_

* * *

Dean spent his twenty-first birthday helping his dad dig up the bones of three patients haunting the geriatrics wing of an old city hospital. In Maine. In January. After that they always tried to spend the winter in the South, or at least steer clear of ghost jobs if they were up North.

It's March and he's in Minnesota and he sure as hell ain't twenty-one anymore, but the ground at Chitaqua is near as rock-solid as that old graveyard was.

"We could have found somewhere to set up shop in California, I'm telling you," Jo says, the first day after the camp's water abruptly stops running and Jaeger announces the pipes burst every winter. Because of course they do. "I mean, we'd be dead of their killer flu by now, but at least we'd be _warm_."

On the third day of digging through unyielding earth in an attempt to find the break in the pipes so they can at least _try_ to fix it, Cas says, "This is absurd. We won't get anywhere until the weather warms up. Just leave it, we can get by on bottled water for –"

"Shut the fuck up." Dean very nearly takes a swing at him with his shovel. Going _weeks_ without running water, without showers, getting dirty and unable to wash it off ( _the way he was in Hell_ ) – no. Just no. He can't. Ain't happening. On top of all that, there's the _germs_. Chuck's already got that cough deep in his lungs, they don't need anything else hanging around. "We are going to fix this, goddammit. We are. So shut up and put your back into it, alright?"

Cas doesn't speak to him except to snark for the rest of the day, but they finally find one of the leaks ( _turns out there's more than one, Murphy's law_ ), so overall it's a win.

Mid-afternoon on the sixth day, Theo appears. With Bobby gone, he's taken over radio duty, powering through what's left of the old man's demonological book collection when the wire's quiet. Between one thing and another, it's getting rare for him to come outside except for food.

"This had better be good news," Dean warns him. Six days and he's filthy as he's been in his life, his back aching, remnants of frostbite on his fingers stinging like a bitch, bad right shoulder protesting at every swing of the shovel. He is so not in the mood to have any more shit piled on him today.

To his astonishment, Theo grins broad and nods. "Aw yeah, it's good news. Reckon I figured out the answer to our demon problem."

The problem Theo's referring to is this: with all the wards on Bela, to find they need to go old school. Get the scoop from another demon. But how can you trace demonic activity when no-one's keeping an eye on the weather satellites? Bulletins on the wire are getting rarer and rarer, and they're no use anyway. Nobody's worrying about electrical storms and cattle mutilations, not these days.

It's a thorny one, and if the kid's hit on the solution? Well, damn. Dean puts down his shovel, whistles down-up for Jo, up-down for Cas, jerks his head at Theo. "Lead on, MacDuff."

Theo's almost skipping as they head uphill toward the cabin with the radio and Bobby's library. He makes some kind of dramatic _voila!_ gesture as he opens the door.

Inside it's warm –must have that space heater going all the time – and smells of melted candle wax, heavy incense. Ritual smells. Dean's eye falls on the copy of the _Key of Solomon_ laid out open in front of the radio, and for a moment he's certain Bobby's going to wheel in, grouching about damn ( _Winchesters_ ) kids pawing at his precious books and using up all his incense. He swallows hard and looks away.

There's a small table in the room that Theo has by some miracle managed to clear of piles of books and folders of news clippings and illegibly-scrawled notes. Instead it's covered with a large map of the continental US, stones holding down the corners. Bobby's silver divining pendulum hangs above it, swinging erratically this way and that, suspended from a piece of cord tied to a small hook set into the ceiling. Taped to the pendulum is a ballpoint pen, the end of it chewed almost to breaking point. At the edge of the table sits a metal bowl containing a lit candle, incense, and next to it a dog-eared pad of yellow legal paper. A familiar Aramaic sigil is etched into the top page, incongruously surrounded by Theo's weird little doodles.

"So, I saw that little hook up there, got me thinking." Theo's more animated than Dean's seen him since the disastrous trip to NOLA. He gets up on a chair, eyes dancing as he points to each part of his set up in turn. "I figured if I use that to fix the pendulum – and then I got one of those, like, tracking spell things? One that just does demons in general, yeah? And the bits in the ritual where Bobby's notes say you put the limits on what you're looking for, I said the whole country, and to run for like two hours – I dunno how long that candle's gonna last – and then got the pen –"

Cas is nodding along, and Jo says, "Awesome. It's like one of those whatsits with the pens they use to measure earthquakes and shit."

"Right!" Theo looks to Dean, grinning puppy-dog eager. "Whaddaya think, old man?"

He punches Theo gently in the ribs. "You done good, you son-of-a-bitch. You done good. Now let's scale this down, we're not going all the way to fucking Florida no matter how many demons they got. Go find Jaeger, he'll give you some maps that are just the neighbouring states. Get ahold of some more candles while you're at it, you're gonna be running this mother day and night."

The kid nods, bounces down from the chair. "Awesome! Jaeger's round back by the stores, right? I'll go ask him now." And off he bolts, still smiling ear to ear.

Dean can't help but smile a little himself as he leans over to inspect the looping trails of blue ink sketched across the map. Nothing quite like the rush of building something, fixing something, specially when you're a kid. Reminds him of that old EMF meter he made from his Walkman years back. Good times.

"Iowa's looking pretty hot," Jo observes. "Detroit area too, but shit, I'm not crazy about going back there."

"Damn straight," Dean mutters, then looks up at Cas. "Man, remember when we tracked those white-eyed motherfuckers through Iowa just watching the storms on the horizons? Them were the days, huh?"

Cas doesn't smile. Just stands there, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, face shuttered. He says quietly, "And when you do hunt down a demon, what do you mean to do with it?"

Dean snorts. "Braid its hair. The hell do you _think_ we're gonna do with it?"

"You know the plan." Jo lifts her chin, stares at Cas with narrowed dark eyes. "Don't be a dick about this."

And Cas says in that quiet dark voice, "There's a _person_ , a human, inside the body of every demon you'll take."

Jo throws her head back and laughs at the ceiling, and Dean doesn't blame her. Of all the things. Of all the things to say and of all the fucking times to say it. "Yeah," he says, "and every Croat used to be a person too. You know how many demons and Croats we've ganked these last four years, Cas? Because I lost count way back. Come on."

Cas looks away, jaw tight and mouth twisting as he glares at nothing, and yeah _._ Yeah, it's time for him to get down off of that angel high horse he still thinks he can ride. Way past time.

Before Dean can say as much, Jo smacks his shoulder, whistles to Cas. "All right, boys. Claws away. We'd better get back to work, those pipes ain't digging themselves up."

They both groan at the thought, and she's laughing at them as she turns to go. Dean follows, Cas falling into step beside him. Their shoulders bump together, and Dean doesn't move away but he doesn't look at Cas either.

* * *

It takes another week and a half to fix the pipes. Getting running water back in the cabins is a lost cause – the scope of the problem is just too much to handle – but they set up a pair of working taps, one at each end of the camp.

The showers at Chitaqua were never that great, feeble water pressure and a tendency to veer from scalding to freezing without warning, but they were infinitely better than washing out of a goddamn bucket. When they made it back from New Orleans Dean sat in the one in his cabin, turned the temperature as high as it went and didn't come out ( _until Cas threatened to drag him out_ ) for over an hour.A morning shower had been one of the last things left to him that felt like normality. Like civilisation.

The feeling of always being not-quite-clean gnaws at him, a low-grade background hum of anxious unease. Cas keeps on telling him he'll get used to it, and he supposes he probably will, and that prospect only makes it worse.

The water problem gets solved just in time for another snowstorm to blow in down from Canada and once again bury everything five inches deep, thank God. Digging through _that_ would truly have been a special hell.

As is, they're running low on, well, pretty much everything. Kinda hard to do a proper supply run when there's drifts blocking half the roads. For food they're down to dehydrated army rations and ancient cans and Ted's chickens and whatever Dean and Risa and Jaeger shoot out in the woods. The situation with the medical and sanitation supplies is even less rosy. Chuck's cough isn't improving any, and then Pippa catches it, and no matter how much she eats little Emma Weiss keeps getting skinnier and skinnier and never any taller. Dean's no expert, but from what he remembers about ( _Sam_ ) twelve-year-olds, that can't be good.

What he wouldn't give for a little of Castiel's ( _certainty, his calm unwavering faith_ ) mojo right now.

When the generator fails ( _again, goddamn it_ ) at the end of March Dean has it back up and running by the end of the day, and doesn't tell anyone that he just used the last of his stock of spare fuses.

That night, he sits up late with Jo and Risa in their cabin, Cas cross-legged on the floor between Lana and Erin, leaning back against Dean's shins. He listens to them all argue about books and conspiracy theories and a load of other shit that hasn't mattered for years now and passes the joint on without ever taking a drag. Runs his fingertips over the fine scar down the side of his face. Wonders if the source of the thick haze of blue ink Theo's pendulum is even now etching over Detroit is Meg or ( _Lucifer)_ Sam or neither or both.

This winter has been the end of the beginning and he doesn't know if any of them will survive another turn of the year.

* * *

In the second week of April the weather finally, _finally_ , breaks. It seems to happen all at once: the wind starts to come from the south and not the north, and the mercury finally creeps up into the forties. Then almost before anyone dares to hope the vicious winter is over, it's warm enough to go gloveless, and the snow is melting to reveal the mud and grass beneath, and leaves are budding bravely on bare tree branches. There's been so much snow for so long that not even the kids mourn its passing. Dean could almost cry at the sight of all that green.

As soon as the thaw starts to take hold, it's time for a major supply run. Not just the usual suspects either: Chuck ( _and his goddamn clipboard_ ), Jane, Ted and Erin come along too. All hands on deck.

As raids go, it's a good one. No one gets ambushed by Croats. Cas is good-humoured and not in the mood for talking any of his bullshit. The two of them are in charge of stocking up on ammunition, and whatever bits and pieces Dean needs to keep the cars and guns working like they should. When Dean takes a detour to nab a box of spare fuses for the generator, Cas raises his eyebrows but doesn't make a thing of it.

As they make their light-fingered way through the abandoned malls and hunting stores, Dean keeps noticing plants encroaching in on the buildings. Creepers breaking through window-frames and cracked walls, grasses coming up through floorboards. It strikes Dean as eerie, like Theo's spooky little drawings, and for the first time he really wonders what kind of a world will be left to them when ( _his brother_ ) the devil's gone.

Well. Cross that bridge ( _if_ ) when they come to it.

He goes on with his scavenging. If he sees Cas's eyes linger long on the fringes of green edging through the walls, he ignores it.

When they all regroup to pack the spoils into the cars, Cas breaks his foot. It's stupid, really. No Croats involved, no demons, not so much as a mouse. Quietest supply run they've been on, and the idjit manages to do himself in.

It happens like this: Dean and Cas are carrying a crate filled with canisters of gasoline and vegetable oil over to the pickup truck between them. From off to one side Jo whistles Cas's up-down signal, and when Cas stops to look over at her, Dean keeps walking. They both fumble and drop the crate, landing on Cas's foot with an audible crunch, followed by a strangulated yowl of pain.

Dean cracks up. Can't help it. Just too fucking absurd. "Sorry, sorry – ah, shit – sorry – Harvelle, a little help here – oh, man –"

Cas sits down heavily in the mud, grimacing, as Jo helps Dean lift the crate off him. Ted darts over to lend a hand putting it into the bed of the truck, then Dean ( _biting his lip to kill the giggles_ ) goes to take a look at Cas's foot, examine it with a practiced light touch.

"Yeah, you broke something alright." He pats Cas's shoulder, digs his fingers in and kneads a little ( _the way Cas loves_ ) in wordless apology for laughing at him, holds out a hand to pull him up. "Go on and sit in the car, guess I'll be driving us back." Cas nods but says nothing, limps off, squinting against the pain.

Dean is expecting him to be pretty much up and at 'em when they get in to camp ( _broken foot ain't all that, chased down a werewolf on one back when he was a kid_ ), but over the drive his foot has swollen in his boot to nearly twice its normal size. Cas shudders and nearly collapses just trying to put it down on the ground. At Dean's yell, Lana runs over to support Cas on his other side, and together they walk him up the track to the cabin, over to the unmade bed.

"You want me to stay with you, sugar?" Lana says, stroking Cas's cheek. "Look after you?"

For fuck's sake. Dude used to be an angel, he's up there with the deadliest motherfuckers Dean's ever known, he doesn't need babysitting. "Come on," he tells Lana. "We need everyone unloading the cars, he'll be fine." And then, to Cas, "Be back in a few, I'll bring something for the pain, okay?"

Cas nods, once, tightly. His face is pale and sheened with sweat. He says nothing as Dean leaves, Lana trailing behind.

When all the crates are out of the cars and Chuck is in fine form running through his checklists to tell everyone what's going where, Dean opens up one of the boxes Theo and Erin liberated from the abandoned hospital. He roots through it till he comes up trumps with a prescription bottle of Vicodin ( _not even out of date, either_ ), then fills up his flask at the nearest of the two taps.

The water's cold, and he jumps when it splashes on his hands. He thinks suddenly of Arizona years ago, the suffocating heat, how ( _Castiel_ ) Cas had ( _saved him again_ ) stitched him up and brought him water, brought him ice, cool and delicious.

As he goes back into their cabin, the first sight of Cas laid out across rumpled blankets makes something twist inside him, sweet and painful. Just the sight of him – on the bed they share in the cabin they share, the both of them still alive and together after all these long years – it's some sort of a miracle, really.

Cas sits up as he comes in, easily catches the bottle of pills Dean tosses to him. He swallows one dry, washes two more down with a great gulp of water when Dean hands over the flask.

"Sorry there's no ice." Dean runs his fingers gently through the hair curling at Cas's nape. Gonna be needing a haircut soon. "I would've brought you some, but we got none, so."

Cas gives him a blank, eyebrows raised _what-the-fuck-Dean_ look. "Why would I want ice? It's, what, fifty degrees out."

"It – nothing." Just getting sentimental in his old age, is all. Pathetic, really. "You want anything else?"

For a moment Cas's gaze lingers on Dean's mouth, and he thinks, _oh yeah_ , but then Cas shakes his head. "Naw, you go handle the unpacking, fearless leader." He rattles the Vicodin, smirking. "I've got what I need."

* * *

It's a bad break. It's a bad break and Cas will be out of commission for the duration, that much is obvious.

For the first few days Dean stays with him. They play hand after hand of poker, of gin rummy, the way they did that time way back in '10 when Dean came down with a flu ( _not even one of the new killer ones, embarrassing really_ ) that laid him out for three days. When grub's up Dean hovers while Cas hobbles along on the makeshift crutches Jaeger put together. A couple of sunny afternoons they spend out at the shooting range, Dean supervising Rachael's shotgun practice, Cas and Jo on another round of their endless knife-throwing contest.

And of course, they fuck around, Cas tranquil and pliant on his painkillers, Dean almost feverish with the glimpses he keeps snatching of what they used to be. Yeah, they do that a lot.

And it's good in some ways. It is. When it's just the two of them.

But it can't stay that way.

There's too much to be done for the both of them to just hide away like that, and before long Dean's crawling up the walls anyways. So he starts back in on repairing all the damage the winter did to the camp, and on looking over the maps of demon activity drawn by Theo's pendulum. Cas oughta be part of that, but when Jo says as much he just shrugs, says he won't be going on the hunts with them so what does it matter.

Dean almost argues the toss. But there's some note in Cas's voice he doesn't like, sour and apathetic, and he always thinks better when Cas ain't in the room distracting him ( _making him weak_ ), so it's probably for the best.

It's not easy to make sense of the chaotic scribbles all over the maps, even the smaller scale ones. They can debate it back and forth all day, Jo and Dean: _there's more here – no, here – but that's too near the city, it'll be red-hot with Croats – if we go there they can back us up against the lake – well we ain't hunting 'em in the mountains, that's_ asking _for trouble – look, there's fuckloads up here in Ontario – yeah, but we can't risk the Canadian border – you got a better idea, huh?_ And God knows Risa and Theo have enough opinions of their own as well.

And so Dean spends more and more time plotting and planning with Jo the way he used to with Cas, and _(Sam_ ) Dad before that. And Cas spends more and more time high, strung out on Vicodin, watching Dean from under heavy lids, smiling loose and languid. Leaning in close to murmur in the ears of the women who are always at his side, laughing his half-rotted laugh at their jokes, smiling and smiling and smiling.

Sometimes Dean stays up with Jo half the night, passing a hand-rolled cigarette and a flask of Ted's moonshine between them, talking about the plan or the Colt or nothing at all, until he's sure Cas'll have passed out. It's easier that way. Easier to pick his way through the cabin in the dark, slide under the unwashed covers, press himself along Cas's side and breathe in the smell of ( _the two of them_ ) him, heart beating raw in his chest, and _pretend_.

There's just – God, there's just something about that smile and that laugh. Dean remembers the very first time he heard Cas laugh, remembers Cas's _real_ smile, and sometimes he wants to slap the cheap narcotic imitation off his face. Listens to that half-slurred drawl, the smirking lazy flirtations, the New Age bullshit and the outright lies and ( _worst of all_ ) the half-truths, and wants to shake him. Shake him and scream at him until he snaps the fuck out of it, comes back, is _Cas_ again.

He never does. But he wants to. Wants to so bad.

One warm and humid evening as they move into May, Cas is particularly out of it. As he weaves back and forth where he sits on one of the benches, eyes rolling glassy in his head, Jo catches the curl of Dean's lip. She makes a quick sweep with the flat of her hand, the _stand-down_ signal. "Chill, okay? Give him a couple weeks, when his foot heals up he'll slow down on the drugs. You know it."

"Yeah." Sounds exactly like what Dean used to tell _(his brother_ ) himself, when Dad would come home from a job and hit the bottle so goddamn hard he might as well have stayed away. _He just had a rough one, just needs to take off the edge right now, give him a few days, he'll sober up, be good as new._ And yeah, it was true, but it also wasn't. And Dean is done lying to himself.

* * *

Eventually Dean and Jo come to a decision. The Milwaukee area's been a demon hotspot for awhile, and Risa grew up there, so she knows the place, which doesn't hurt. That's gonna be the first stop of no doubt many ( _nothing's ever easy_ ) on the hunt.

Why Dean goes to tell Cas, he couldn't quite say. Not like Cas cares, he's made that much abundantly clear the last few weeks. Old habits die hard, though, and he doesn't want to let the son-of-a-bitch just opt out of this thing. None of them get a choice about this, not anymore, and the sooner Cas realises it the better.

Pippa is in the cabin when Dean gets there, laid out on the floor in just her underwear, eyes closed and chanting 'Om' ecstatically. Jesus fucking Christ. Cas is sitting on the bed, watching her and smiling dreamily. He gives Dean a wink he probably thinks is surreptitious as he comes in.

"Well, uh, I hate to interrupt, I'm sure y'all got very important hippie shit to be getting on with, but I need a word with Cas. A _private_ word with Cas." Pippa opens her eyes and sits up, looking aggrieved. Dean gives her his best and scariest smile. "Like, now."

It works. She pulls on her sweater and cut-off shorts and disappears with a last glance at Cas, coming-to-pieces tennis shoes in her hands.

Cas sits back, leaning on his elbows, smirks up at Dean, eyebrows raised. "To what do I owe the pleasure, fearless leader?"

It sounds half a come-on, half a put-down. Dean clenches his fist at his side and keeps his voice even. "Me and Jo, we decided. We're gonna head down Milwaukee way with Risa, see if we can flush out a black-eyed motherfucker or two."

He waits, but Cas says nothing, just stares at him in silence. All the dreaminess and the flirtation is gone from his face, leaving him looking sadder and more himself than he has in – well, too goddamn long. And maybe it's that that brings Dean closer, walks him up to the side of the bed to give Cas's good foot a reassuring nudge. "Risa knows the area, and we aren't gonna fuck with no Croats, any sign of that bullshit and we'll get the hell out of dodge. Just demons. And we'll take 'em out into the country to do our stuff, so –"

Without warning Cas leans forward to take Dean's left hand in his, and Dean stops talking abruptly.

For all the ways, all the times he and Cas have touched each other, this is different. New. In the heat of the moment Dean's licked Cas's fingers, sucked at them, had them wrapped tight around his wrists. Once, shortly after the train wreck that was New Year's, Cas kissed all the blood blisters the cold had bitten into Dean's hands. This, though? Fingers intertwined and holding hands like wholesome apple-pie teenage sweethearts? This, they've not done.

Cas says, "Dean. Dean. When I was an angel, when I was Castiel and I raised you from Hell, you fought me all the way out." He reaches up to press his right hand to Dean's left shoulder, right over the scar seared into his skin. "Do you remember that?"

Dean opens his mouth. Shuts it again.

Does he remember – he remembers.

He remembers leaning over the rack, razor buried to the hilt in the wet of some bastard's eye, and the constant screaming of the damned and whirring and grinding of infernal machinery rising to a panicked crescendo like he'd never heard in all his forty years. He remembers the firmament of Hell shaking, shaking as if tearing itself apart, and drawing his razor out and huddling down behind the rack and calling desperately ( _help me save me please please please_ ) for Alastair, and he remembers this light. This sudden light, the most brilliant thing he had ever seen. Light so white it shone on everything, shone on him, on his blood-tarred skin and down through the cracks in it, on every part of him, even and especially all the parts that were filthy and monstrous and gone septic. Light that was grace and redemption and love and oh fuck how it had burned. Burned more than anything Alastair could ever dream of. And no matter how he'd tried there was no hiding from it.

He remembers the Pit and the light and the agony and then he remembers waking up in the absolute blackness of a pine box.

Underneath his fraying shirt, underneath Cas's palm, his scar feels white-hot. His mouth is dry. "I. I'm not –" Fuck. Cas can't fucking do this to him. He _can't._ Roughly he shrugs the hand from his shoulder. "Damn it, Cas. Where do you get off saying shit like that, huh? What do you want from me?"

The slow smile that creeps across Cas's lips makes him want to ( _flay someone_ ) beat something bloody. "I want you to not go to Milwaukee. To not – to not _torture_ anything. Anyone. That's what I want, Dean."

"Are you kidding me? You'd better be fucking kidding me," Dean says, very calmly. It's either that or start shouting and never stop.

Shaking his head, Cas says, "Not kidding. Don't – don't be this, okay? Just, I am asking you not to be this."

Dean almost laughs. "Little late for that, Cas. Wow." Cas is still holding his hand, still gazing at him, eyes drug-dark and round, his best beseeching doe eyes. And Dean looks at him and thinks, _you fucking hypocrite, you made me into this._ Because no matter what Cas hopes, Dean still remembers Castiel twisting his arm to make him pick up the knife again, back before _(Sam said_ yes) curtain up on the Apocalypse.

It was Alastair who taught him to love the razor's edge, but it was Cas made him learn how that felt topside. And if he'd never fallen off the wagon then, maybe –

Well, maybe nothing. He did. It happened, and that's the whole point.

"It's not – Dean, it's not worth it." Cas makes a grab for his shoulder again, and when Dean shrugs him off again settles for a fistful of his shirt.

Through his teeth Dean says, "If we track down Bela, then –"

"The Colt, the Colt, yeah, I know, but – you know it's not – we're not gonna win this. Even if you do get the gun, we can't win this one. Come on, you know this."

"I don't know no such thing," Dean snaps, and grits his teeth when Cas looks at him and laughs. Hard to believe this is the same ( _angel_ ) man who ( _gripped him tight_ ) only a year ago stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him at Atlanta.

"Yeah, yeah, you do." Cas's smile is something cold and dead. "Yeah, you do. Tried to say _yes,_ didn't you?"

And that – that is _it._ "Fuck you, Cas." The back of his mouth tastes of bile. He's so angry he can't breathe, can't think. He puts his hand on Cas's chest and shoves hard. "Fuck you. You think what you want, but I don't wanna hear it, because I will win this war if it's the last goddamn thing I do."

Cas is sprawled out on the bed, not making any move to sit up. He looks – fuck, he looks sad. Still smiling, but the protective mask of drugs and cynicism has come down. Just a little. Just enough for Dean to see what's underneath.

He looks like a child, a little lost boy desperate for someone to come and hold him and take him home. Guess that's what he is, really, ( _same as Dean_ ) when you get down to it. There's a part of Dean that wants to be that person for him. Wants to smooth down his rucked up hair, kiss him, promise him everything's gonna be okay.

But Cas is a grown-ass man, not a child ( _and even the actual children in Chitaqua don't need coddling like that_ ), and Dean's done with lying.

When he walks out he doesn't look back.

* * *

As it happens, Milwaukee is a bust. They get hold of a demon all right ( _don't dare try and take more than one_ ). Drive it out of the city onto the backroads with a sigil-covered sack tied over its head, a binding mark cut into its arm. Find an abandoned roadside diner, sketch a Devils' Trap into the floor. Then Risa stands guard outside ( _cuz there's things she don't need to see_ ) while Dean and Jo set to work.

For nigh-on five hours they take it in turns, passing the knives and the scalpels and the salt between them like they would cigarettes and moonshine. Better that way, trading off, makes it ( _more fun_ ) less tiring.

The demon breaks. Oh, the son-of-a-bitch breaks as fine as anything Dean ever ( _did_ ) saw below, eyes a-roll and mouth a-froth, but it knows nothing. Nothing beyond Bela's name, that she's some too-big-for-her-boots crossroads demon, no shit Sherlock.

On the return drive, Risa's spitting mad with frustration and impatience ( _fright, too, way she looks at the grime on their hands)_. Couple of years ago and Jo would've been the same, all riled up and ready to run right into everything half-cocked. Hell, a few years ago and _Dean_ would've been the same. But all that's done with now.

Instead they go back to spending their days and their nights watching the track of Theo's pendulum, waiting quietly for the patterns to emerge. Tinkering with the set-up and the conditions of the spell. Plotting out points and routes on the big map Theo tacked up on the wall. It's a gradual thing, but the patterns _do_ emerge, and then and only then do they make another batch of holy water and pack up the car with the tools and drive out to ply their trade.

And they're good at it, the two of them, together. Always they work together – bring along Risa, sometimes Theo, to help with the snatch-and-grab and then keep watch – but the business? The work? Just them. Dean-and-Jo.

And it's better than doing it alone ( _couldn't do it alone)_.

For the first couple rides of the roundabout, Jo acts like an anchor. The sight of her familiar human face, tongue sticking out between her lips as she concentrates, her _tsk_ when she makes a mistake, it all keeps Dean in the here-and-now. On Earth, not in the Pit. And he thinks his presence, his ( _experience_ ) calmness, keeps Jo from freaking out. Once or twice he sees something flicker wildly in her eyes, her hand start to tremble, and he'll say, _goddamn, my shoulder's aching, time-out?_ and she'll snort and say, _alright, Winchester, ya delicate little flower_ , and when they go back to it she's good as new. Yeah, they balance each other.

Spring drags into summer, and as they get more practiced, the time-outs and Dean's moments of confusion ( _where – Hell, or –?_ ) get fewer and farther between. It's easier. Less bloodied dreams. Less shivers up the spine when the things scream.

It's easier and they're better at it and after a while it almost becomes a game. Every hunt they ever worked together was half a game: who finds the bones first, who's the deadest shot, who ganks the most Croats. They fuck with each other. It's just the way they've always been, and it's no different now that it's _I can make it break faster than you,_ and _six-pack of real beer says you can't break it with just the scalpel, Harvelle,_ and _ooh, get the heart, I haven't seen you do a heart_.

When they're back at Chitaqua, they never speak of it to each other. Back there, among other people, normal people, it feels like something shameful. Every now and then, when he's gotten particularly out of his gourd, Cas will bring it up.

He'll ask how their work is going – sneering it, shaking his head – and Dean will look at Jo and Jo will look at Dean and that tension between them hums like it did in New Orleans. The love for the knife, and the hate for ( _themselves_ ) each other. Hell's perpetual motion machine.

And one or the other of them will tell him it's good.

And mostly, it's true. Business is good.

* * *

By the time Cas's foot heals, summer has come, hot and godawful humid even up in the mountains. The days pass in a slow heat-haze, the air heavy with the drone of flies, the water from the camp's two taps never quite cold enough to bring any relief.

It's not like Chitaqua was ever the liveliest of places, but all through that summer, it's almost as still as any of the ghost towns Dean's driven through since the Cage opened. Most everyone stays in the cabins, hiding from the sun's glare, only venturing out for food and to re-fill their water flasks. The AC in the armoured cars is broke and Dean can't seem to fix it, so supply runs are a toss-up between being blind as a bat on the unlit highways at night, and slowly broiling in the day. Hours of fun, either way.

The heat has everyone's tempers fraying – Dean loses track of how many dumbass fights the yuppies get into, how often Theo and Jo end up screaming at one another over some total bullshit. They're so many cats trapped in a bag with the heat turned up under them, and everyone's feeling it.

Well. Everyone but Cas.

When his foot's better, to Dean's mild amazement, he does dial it down on the Vicodin. There's a couple of days where Dean actually thinks, _maybe, maybe_. This could be it. Maybe.

Surprise, surprise, it isn't. Cas cuts back on the opiates, sure, but not all the way, and he goes full steam ahead on the drinking and the pot. Goes at it like he means it, going for the gold, and it'd almost be impressive if it weren't so pathetic.

He used to be high most nights, sure, sometimes enough to still be feeling it the next morning. This is something different. Gets to the point where there's just no such thing as a sober Cas, not in the mornings, not in the afternoons, certainly not in the evenings. Just … doesn't exist anymore.

Even without the excuse of his injury, Cas doesn't come join the scheming sessions around the map in ( _Bobby's_ ) Theo's cabin. Begs off supply runs whenever he can, won't be bugged into target practice with Jo. All he ever does is sit in the cabin or on the porch, drinking and smoking with the women, Lana and the rest of them, talking and laughing about nothing the way drunks and stoners do.

That's not _all_ they get up to, of course. Dean can smell it in the bed sheets at night, and, well, he's been known to join in every now and then. Hell, sex is sex, whatever. Ain't like he's gonna turn it down.

So yeah, between the girls and the never being sober, Cas is a pretty happy camper these days. Always smiling. Always laughing. Maybe he even fools some of the rest, but Dean can see past it. Sees the coldness behind the eyes that his smile never touches. Can read between all the lines of his irreverent patter, can hear the depth of the apathy in his voice. The contempt underneath every _fearless leader_.

And that's fine. _Fine_. Dean doesn't need the approval of some goddamned perma-stoned New Age wannabe. He doesn't care about Cas or what he thinks, not anymore.

Except for how he really kind of does.

Because still, even after Cas threw everything back in his face, Dean can't turn it off. Can't look at his stupid unshaven pretty face without having to swallow down a thousand and one memories, without aching to just trace the softness of his lips. Can't stop his deep-sleeping heart from stirring when he wakes in the wee hours and Cas is pressed up against him, head on his chest, sound asleep, helpless and trusting. Can't keep from smiling when Cas occasionally turns up to order him and Jo to stop obsessing over that damn pendulum and get some rest.

No matter how twisted Cas thinks he is. No matter how weak he thinks Cas is. No matter how much being around the son-of-a-bitch sometimes makes him want to scream. No matter how much he wishes he could just stop fucking feeling this, stop letting Cas make him so vulnerable.

Dean can't turn it off. No matter how much they both want not to be, they're tied together now. Woven through each other's fabric. Mingled forever like their scents are in this wretched cabin.

It should be some sort of a mindfuck, the combination of tenderness and loathing he feels. The two ought to be irreconcilable, but they're not. They're really not. Dean loved his father while fearing him, loved his brother while he couldn't trust him. Loving Cas while he can't stand him is just one more link in the long chain of his life.

* * *

A late summer evening, and Dean's sitting in ( _Bobby's_ ) Theo's cabin with Jo and Risa, idly watching the swing of the pendulum, passing a roll-up around. Theo's thumbing through Bobby's translation of _The Book of the Dead_ , his lamp aflutter with moths. It's very quiet, the only sounds the crinkle of pages turning, the skritch of the pen dragging across the map, soft static from the radio, their breathing.

Then the radio, which has been almost silent for months, crackles loudly, and a broken voice echoes out: " _This is Kansas City Army HQ. We are under attack. Request back-up. Does anyone read me? Repeat, Kansas City under attack. Request back-up."_

Dean and Jo just have time to exchange a look ( _aw hell, this is gonna make Atlanta look like a cakewalk_ ) before Theo has put his book down and is leaning in to the mic. "This is Chitaqua. We read you, Kansas City. Be with you in –" The kid breaks off, glances at Dean. He holds up all ten fingers, closes his fists, holds up three. "Thirteen hours, give or take."

" _Thirteen hours, roger that, Chitaqua."_

The radio crackles again and goes back to static.

Dean lets out a long breath, tapping ash into the empty can of soup they're using for an ashtray. "Well, well, well. Now Kansas City wants _our_ help? What's their motherfucking quarantine wall for? Shit."

"How the mighty have fallen," Jo says, shaking her head, and barks a laugh, harsh.

Theo stands up so fast he nearly tips his chair over, fists clenched at his side. "Are you fucking _kidding_ me? They get hit by Croats and demons and God knows what and y'all wanna just sit here and let it happen because – because they –"

"Spent the last two years hiding behind that wall, ganking anyone within firing range, without lifting a finger to help the rest of us?" Jo grins at him, all teeth. "It had occurred to me, yeah. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?"

Theo opens his mouth and shuts it, apparently so pissed he's speechless ( _that'll be a first_ ), and Risa says sharply, "That's disgusting. If we don't stick together – Jo, that's just _disgusting_. We've got a _duty_ here."

And yeah, that's Risa all over. Duty. Once a cop, always a cop. Guess it's a little like being a hunter that way. Dean gets to his feet, stubs out the cigarette in the tin can. "Yeah, we know. _We know_. And we're gonna do this. We are." He gives Theo's shoulder a shake. "Same's Atlanta, okay?"

When he gives Jo a look ( _wanna back me up here?_ ), she sighs, stretching her arms up over her head. "Yeah, we'll do this thing alright. Just don't mean we gotta like it. Dean, if you got any of those amphetamine pills, now would be the time. It's gonna be a long night."

Risa nods slowly, mollified. Theo still looks pissy but he hops to it when Dean orders him to go get the fuel canisters for the cars. Good kid, really, that one. Quick temper ( _like Sam at that age_ ), but he knows when to say how high.

"So Theo's getting the fuel – Jo, you load us up with ammunition and the rest," Dean makes a quick slicing motion with one hand, _the tools,_ and she nods her understanding, "Me'n'Risa, we'll round up the troops. I want us good to go in an hour, okay? Let's get this show on the road."

* * *

For once, when Dean comes into their cabin, Cas is alone. Sitting up and leaning against the headboard of the bed ( _the way he used to sleep_ ), reading one of Erin's paperbacks. He puts the book down as Dean enters, dog-earing his page. "What's up, fearless leader?"

Dean goes straight for the bedside table, opens the drawer to retrieve the prescription bottle of amphetamines, his spare rosary, the small silver knife for emergencies. Picks up the ankle sheath from on top of the chest of drawers, sits on the edge of the bed to tug his boot off and strap it on. Slides the silver knife home and pulls his boot back on. Not likely they'll run into a black dog or a shapeshifter, but better to be safe than sorry.

When he goes to get up, Cas grabs his arm. "Dean. What's going on?"

It's the first time in – well, in too long – that Cas has called Dean by name and it makes him pause for a moment. He turns to look at Cas, studies his face. The edges of him are a little smoothed out, but he's mostly there. Mostly. "Distress call on the wire from Kansas City," he says, getting to his feet. His demon-knife and Cas's angel-sword are over on the table across the room. "The wall must have been breached, cuz they are in the shit with Croats, probably demons too. So get your game face on."

He sticks the knife through his belt, and turns around, holding out Cas's blade. Cas doesn't take it. Just sits there on the bed, one leg folded up under him, looking at Dean all doe-eyed like Dean kicked his favourite puppy.

And Dean's apparently still not immune to that look, goddammit, because he takes a step closer. And another. "Cas?"

"Can't we just …" Cas reaches up, cradles Dean's face in his palm, the pad of one thumb stroking softly over his cheekbone. "Can't we just stay here? Stay here, stay safe here, and just … just …"

He trails off, biting his lip, and Dean grabs his wrist, tight. "What the fuck, man? What're you saying? This is like Atlanta, they need us _there_."

Cas's mouth twists. "Yeah, cuz we did so much good in Atlanta." When Dean rolls his eyes, jaw clenching, Cas lifts his other hand to grip the back of his neck gently. Caresses his cheek, brushes fingertips over his lips. "Just stay here, okay? Stay with me, Dean."

God. God, he's being all – sweet. Sweet and sincere like they haven't been with each other for so long – since – hell, must be a year. More. A year or more and _fuck_ but Dean's still. Still can't handle this. Not from him. "Cas, you stop saying that. It ain't gonna happen."

But he doesn't pull away. Doesn't resist as Cas tugs him down and reaches up to kiss him on the mouth. It sets him shivering even in the sticky August night ( _stupid, stupid, stupid_ ). It's an effort of will not to push Cas back down onto the bed and peel off that threadbare t-shirt, cover his tanned-gold skin with Dean's own, sunburnt and freckled. He could forget himself in that kiss, he really could. Lose himself forever.

He doesn't know who he hates more for that, Cas or himself.

It's Cas who breaks the kiss. Presses their foreheads together, breath ghosting over each other's lips. Under Dean's palm, he can feel Cas's pulse tripping in his wrist. "Stay," Cas says, voice dark and raw the way it gets in the heat of the moment. "Dean. Please."

He wants to. Wants it too fucking much. But this is so much bigger than them and what they _want_. "No. Cas, for fuck's sake, you know we can't do that."

"We can, we can." Fingers tracing the neck of Dean's t-shirt, the line of his jaw. Another kiss, brief and almost chaste. "Dean, Dean. I love you, c'mon, stay, I love you."

Everything inside Dean goes suddenly still and quiet. _I love you_. A year ago, he would have cried to hear those words, wanted them so deeply he couldn't even think about it. And now? Well, now maybe Cas really means it and maybe he doesn't, but either way it's too little too late. He pulls back. Yanks Cas's hand off of his face. "Yeah? And what the fuck does that solve?"

Cas blinks, licks his lips. Eyes darting this way and that way, familiar, a drunk trying to figure out which way is up. "What? I don't –"

"That doesn't change anything. World's still ending. One of the last cities in the country left standing is still about to be wiped off of the map. We still gotta stop it." Dean looks away, almost laughing. "You saying that, you thinking that, it doesn't change a goddamn thing."

Except it might have changed his mind, and that's what Cas was counting on. That son-of-a-bitch.

Castiel might have manipulated him six ways from Sunday as an angel, but coming from _Cas_? Well, it just sticks in Dean's craw.

"It's a lost cause." Cas passes his hands down his face, rubbing at unshaven cheeks the way he does when he' sobering up and doesn't want to. "Kansas City, it's a done deal. If you go – if _we_ go – we won't make any difference. It's over anyway."

"Yeah, maybe it is. Doesn't matter." Dean holds out the knife, hilt first. Speaks through his teeth. "We still have to try."

Cas snorts. "Why? Why do we? We've risked our lives, over and over, and it's done no one any good. What's the point in doing it again? What's the goddamn _point_ , huh, fearless leader?"

Never has Dean missed Castiel as much as he does right now, staring into the cold eyes of the coward who used to be his ( _lover_ ) best friend. "Point is, Lucifer? Sam? What they've done? That's on _us_."

And Cas laughs, derisive, lips twisting around a sneer. "Your brother made his own choices," he says, "You blame yourself all you like, but don't try and drag me into your little guilt complex. I'm not part of it."

That's a low blow. God, that's such a low blow that for a moment Dean forgets to breathe. Then he thinks, _two can play at that game_ , and reaches for his own weapon, the ammunition he's been quietly saving for four years. "No? Okay then, tell me, I've been wondering, the night he freed Lucifer, how did Sam get out that panic room, huh?"

 It takes a second or two for that to sink in. Dean sees the exact moment it makes it through the haze of alcohol and pot and whatever else, the moment the sharp-edged smirk crumbles from Cas's face. He goes blank, blank like he does in a battle, like he's trying to let everything roll off him, water from a duck's back, and he doesn't say a thing.

Dean waits, and waits, and Cas doesn't say a goddamn thing. The silence confirms all the suspicions that have lurked for years unacknowledged at the back of Dean's mind. There's only the smallest, grimmest morsel of satisfaction in that vindication.

He holds out the angel-blade again, and this time Cas takes it. Reluctantly, slowly, but he takes it. Dean gives him his best, nastiest smile. "Saddle up. We're going to Kansas City."


	11. In The Hot Zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He shifts his grip on his rifle, licks his cracked lips, starts running through Led Zep lyrics in his head, one of his oldest stay-awake ( _stay-awake-and-look-after-your-brother)_ tricks. Beside him, Risa's knee is jigging frenetically and to his other side Jo's spinning her silver ( _skinning knife_ ) pocketknife rhythmically between fingers and thumb. Across the alley, Ted and Jaeger are muttering jokes back and forth, while Cas sits with his head sunk between his knees, rifle at his feet, a marionette with its strings cut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for graphic torture, major character death.

_'I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away.'_

* * *

The sky above Kansas City is that weird, oppressive almost-green that threatens tornadoes. It doesn't feel inappropriate.

It's been – well, fuck, Dean can't remember quite how long it's been since their little convoy crossed the line of smoking rubble where the quarantine wall used to be, into the cracked and crumbling city itself. Time's got a way of blurring out into one great surreal smear when you've been awake to see more than one dawn, running on nothing but pills and scant mouthfuls of military protein bars and spare minutes of sleep when the gunfire stops.

To hear the Army tell it when they arrived, the job was easy. "We're gonna sweep the place," the regional commander, a scarred-up Marine named Garrett, told them. He'd had a manic ( _sadistic_ ) gleam in his eye and a belt covered in notches that Dean recognised from the summer before. It wasn't a surprise to him that the man was still live and kicking: some people thrive on blood and guts ( _Dean oughta know_ ). "Sweep it like you would any other town with the bug. North to south. You know the drill."

"Sure do," Jo had agreed, and they'd formed up a line with the soldiers, assault rifles at the ready. It was a simple plan, and Dean's always appreciated a nice simple plan. They give Murphy's law fewer opportunities, and this particular one was tried and tested. Going from sweeping a small town to a full-on city was kinda upping the ante, true, but the strategy seemed sound enough.

Of course, that was however many days ago. Before they got snarled up in gridlocked streets, civilians hysterical with the knowledge that Croatoan had finally reached their haven and refusing to move or leave their cars until Garrett shot two of them dead as examples. Before the Croats lurking up in the top floors of abandoned buildings started not just lobbing firecrackers and glass bottles and whatever they had to hand, but using guns ( _demons and their mind-control, gotta be, too smart for Croats_ ). Before they gave up any pretence of holding the line intact. Before the Army set downtown on fire in an effort to keep the Croats back.

Now, the sky is an eerie green, dark smoke billowing up from the shattered skyline, and the light is fading as they head into sultry night again.

Again. Another sleepless night of running and hiding and shooting, over and over and over. Dean leans his head back against the bullet-scarred wall of the alley they're sheltering in, shuts his gritty eyes, just briefly. Doesn't dare keep them shut longer than a heartbeat. He can't remember being more tired, not once in all his long years of all-night-all-day hunts. Not even in the Pit.

He wants to just – just lay down on the scorching hot tarmac, rest his head on the cracked sidewalk, let sleep take him. God, he wants that so bad, so bad, he could cry – no. _Pull yourself the fuck together, boy._ If he's gotta bring his people through another night of this, then that's all there is to it. Just keep his eyes open. For fuck's sake. Nothing to it.

He shifts his grip on his rifle, licks his cracked lips, starts running through Led Zep lyrics in his head, one of his oldest stay-awake ( _stay-awake-and-look-after-your-brother)_ tricks. Beside him, Risa's knee is jigging frenetically and to his other side Jo's spinning her silver ( _skinning knife_ ) pocketknife rhythmically between fingers and thumb. Across the alley, Ted and Jaeger are muttering jokes back and forth, while Cas sits with his head sunk between his knees, rifle at his feet, a marionette with its strings cut.

It's been hours ( _he thinks, can't be sure, not with time blurry as it is)_ since there was any word from Garrett and the Army on the walkie-talkies. Last time Dean laid eyes on a human who wasn't one of their own, the sky was getting light in the east. Theo went out to run recon fuck knows how long ago and not a sign since. The smell of human ash is thick in the air. Kansas City is dying and Dean'll be damned if he dies with it.

"If that kid ain't back in another minute …" Jo's voice is low, hoarse. She pulls a flask of water from the side pocket of the backpack beside her, lifts the scarf that shields her nose and mouth to take a swig, passes it to Dean.

"Yeah." The water is sickly-warm and has a metallic tang, but it's such a relief to wash the lingering taste of blood and ash from his mouth. It soothes his parched throat, and for just a moment it's a little easier to breathe through the sweat-slick bandana masking his face. He holds out the bottle to Risa, who shakes her head, and then to Jaeger, who takes it eagerly.

Let them drink, have that little refreshment, then they've got to make a move. Not to chase up Theo ( _kid's probably bitten already, scouting don't take that long),_ but because if they sit here on their asses any longer, inertia will set in, the exhaustion will hit them for real, and then they're fucked. Gotta keep moving, it's the only way to stop the sleep deprivation and then the Croats from catching up.

The flask gets passed from Jaeger to Ted and then Cas. Dean rotates his shoulder-blades ( _the right aches like a mother, dislocated a few too many times),_ kneads with one hand at the base of his neck. The flick-flick-flick of Jo's little knife in his peripheral vision is like the ticking of a clock, murdering time, bit by bit. It feels like he's been in this godforsaken alley, this godforsaken _city_ , all his life.

Dean's just clearing his throat to order everyone up onto their feet when he hears the footsteps: quick but dragging slightly, headed towards them.

In a flash Jo – who's sitting nearest to the mouth of the alleyway – has her knife back in her belt and her rifle in her hands. She makes a brief beckoning gesture ( _back me up_ ) to Dean without moving her gaze from the opening onto the street.

Yeah, yeah. It only sounds like one, but shit, better to be safe than sorry. He brings his rifle up, keeps his voice low as he says, "Okay, ready. Get ready."

Jaeger has his own gun at hand, and for a long moment they sit there, fingers sweaty on their triggers, listening to the ragged gait of whatever ( _whoever_ ) it is. Then Theo rounds the corner, running in an awkward half-crouch, keeping low to the ground, and skids to a halt at the sight of three assault rifles trained on him. Jaeger makes a sort of reflexive jerk, startled, then drops his gun, cursing.

" _Shit_ ," Theo gasps out, drawing it out into at least four syllables as he collapses down cross-legged on the floor.

"Goddammit, kid, I nearly shot you," Jo snaps, lowering her gun. She scoots to one side and pulls him over so he's sitting against the wall between her and Dean. "A little warning the next time? Way to get yourself ganked."

"I didn't – make too much noise –" Theo's breathing heavy and rapid, almost hyperventilating, and fuck, this is too much like Atlanta. Too much like it. They were lucky to get out of _that_ clusterfuck alive, and it'll be a miracle if they do it again. A fucking miracle.

Second verse, same as the first.

Cas holds out the water bottle and Theo grabs it, yanking down the grimy t-shirt tied over his mouth so he can drink. He tips his head back, throat working.

"Go easy on that," Dean says. "Ain't no good if you puke it up again." The kid nods, takes one last, massive gulp, and then stops, lets his head drop down. Dean takes hold of his arm, and it's trembling under his fingers. "What'd you see out there? You were gone long enough."

Eyes closed, Theo says, "Did a circuit of the block. Croats about, but not, like, tons of them? And I think. I think I saw – there's a warehouse or something, next block over. Reckon I saw a demon."

Dean trades a silent glance with Jo. "Demon?"

"Uh-huh. Red-eyed motherfucker. Bunch of Croats following it round like ducklings or some shit." Theo looks up at Dean, a flash of eagerness in his red-rimmed, shadowed eyes. "Red eyes – that's crossroad demons, yeah? Oughta be easier to take down, right?"

"Right." Kid knows his lore, alright. Not that books have ever been much protection out in the real world. Specially not these days. "So how many Croats are we talking, here? That warehouse, can we take it?"

Theo tips his head back again, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, hard. Bites his lip. "I don't – I dunno, Dean, I dunno."

"Not good enough." For fuck's sake, what does he think Dean sent him scouting _for_? To come back all non-committal and hedging his bets? Christ. Dean tightens his grip on Theo's arm, shakes him slightly. "Theo. _Can we take it_?"

The kid swallows, a muscle jumping in his tight-clenched jaw. "Reckon so. Yeah."

Dean lets out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding. "Awesome." If they can get hold of a warehouse, that's a hell of a better position to shelter in until it comes time to leave ( _butcher their way out this fucking city)_ than hunkered down in an alleyway. Might even be able to snatch another power nap, if he's lucky ( _please please please_ ). "Get your breath back, kid, we're gonna make a move in five."

Thing about Theo is, true to seventeen-year-old form, he's an argumentative little brat sometimes, but he understands ( _learnt the hard way, same as Dean)_ when to put up and shut up. When to just nod and do as you're told and ask no questions. Same can't be said of Jaeger, who leans forward, nudging Dean's foot to get his attention. "So – what's the plan, Winchester? Are we gonna wait for the Army boys, keep pushing with the sweep, what?"

_Keep pushing with the sweep_ , he says, like he doesn't realise that horse has well and truly bolted. Shit, maybe he doesn't. Jaeger was a civilian through-and-through until a year ago, still half one now, and Dean always forgets just how ( _innocent)_ naïve civilians are.

"Nope," Dean says shortly, double checking his rifle, the ammo belts looped around his waist, the knot securing his bandana. "We are going to regroup, get as much rest as we can, and then we are gonna get the hell out of dodge. Garrett may be too proud to ditch a sinking ship, but I sure ain't."

Jaeger blinks, eyebrows raised, but doesn't say anything more. Doesn't protest. When they set off from Chitaqua, he'd been all gung-ho, up on his high horse about saving the city, but getting real close up and personal with Croatoan has a way of curing heroism.

"Alright, y'all ready to go?"

Nods, murmurs of assent. Jo, still focused with true hunter intensity on the mouth of the alley, just flicks her hand. Everyone looks rough as hell – the cut on Risa's forehead bleeding sluggishly, Ted grey-faced under the sunburn, Theo still trembling faintly, the creases under Cas's eyes ravine-deep in his grimy face – but no worse than Dean feels. Everyone's still alive, still awake, still in one piece. They'll make it.

"Okay. I take point. Jo on my left, Cas on my right. Risa, you bring up the back, keep an eye up on the tops of the buildings, I don't want any nasty surprises. Theo, stay right behind me, let me know where I'm going." Dean cracks his stiff neck, breathes deep through the clammy shroud over his face. "Let's get this show on the road."

* * *

Once upon a time Dean might have bothered working out some clever-clever plan to get the jump on the enemy. But strategy's kind of lost on Croats, and assault rifles don't really lend themselves to anything that's not just point and hold down the trigger until no-one's left standing _._ There's a time for subtlety and a time for sledgehammers, and today? Definitely a sledgehammer day.

The warehouse looks like it was actually in use and not abandoned until the quarantine wall came down _(Dean can't get over the little pockets of half-normality that still persist in Kansas City)._ It's surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence, and behind that a ring of blank-faced, hypnotised Croats staring out in all directions. Dean has a flash of eerie déjà vu, of ( _the Pit)_ the day he and Ellen and Cas rescued Theo from that camp in Alabama, the dead scavenger stares of ( _the not-quite-demon souls_ ) the prisoners.

History repeats itself, some abstracted observer part of him thinks, as he holds down the trigger and the rifle kicks in his grasp ( _reassuring, a second heartbeat_ ) and the bodies start to fall.

They have the element of surprise, something Dean's father taught him always to take full advantage of. When they come around the corner, the Croats are dying before the goddamn mindless things know what's happening, and whatever Dean thinks about Garrett, the man did load 'em up with ammo.

As soon as there's an opening in the melee, Jo whistles twice on the same note for Dean, and makes a dash for the warehouse without waiting on his reply. He leans over to Cas, guarding his back, and tells him rapid-fire, "We're going in. Me and Jo. For the demon."

Cas doesn't turn to look at him, doesn't even break the rhythm of aim-and-shoot. Just says, "Got it, fearless leader," and then Dean's hot on Jo's heels.

Inside, the warehouse is cavernous and dark, the chill of it an incredible relief from the stultifying heat and humidity. It's filled floor to ceiling with great metal shelves, some filled with crates, others standing empty, skeletal. Under the noise of frantic footsteps and rabid snarling and bursts of gunfire, Dean can hear chanting.

" _Aramaic_?" Jo mouths at him, and he nods.

" _Hell's dialect_." He'd know that language anywhere ( _got damn near fluent after forty years downstairs_ ).

" _Better move before it finishes the ritual_."

As they stalk it, following the echoing voice as it gets louder and louder, Dean's nerves are singing. Not with fear, he's gone past that, thrilling at the animal pleasure of the hunt, the anticipation of ( _the kill_ ) the end.

When they're close, can see a candle flickering in the next aisle, he puts his masked mouth to Jo's ear, breathes, "Split up?"

She flicks her gaze over him, lingering doubtfully on his right arm, the bad shoulder and a slice in the bicep where he caught the edge of a bullet outside. "You good?"

"Enough." They have a formula for when they split up, roles defined over years of practice, and his is the more dangerous. "Just a graze." And a crossroads demon, well. Dean's gone up against hell hounds, against Hell's white-eyed generals, against fucking _Azazel_. The goddamn sales division ain't gonna take him down.

Jo gives him another look, brushes hair back from her sweaty forehead, nods curtly.

Dean pulls the long, serrated demon knife from his belt and twirls it once in a mimic of her party trick, grins behind his bandana when she rolls her eyes. He turns and heads down toward one end of the aisle, not bothering to try to conceal the sound of his footfalls, while Jo slips off in the opposite direction, catlike. Oh yeah. They've still got it.

Adrenaline's buzzing through him now, all the fog of exhaustion burnt away. Dean clears his throat, sing-songs, "Come out, come out, wherever you are …"

There's an answering scrabble of footsteps on the other side of the long row of shelving. Oh yes. Here it comes. Curtain up.

A brief glance at Jo, taut and poised on the balls of her booted feet at the far end of the aisle. Their eyes meet, no need for signals or gestures or any of it. They're ready.

When Dean rounds the corner, knife raised, he's crooning, "Ready or not …"

And there it is. Crouching on the floor next to a silver bowl with a sputtering candle in it ( _he smells burning blood, black magic if ever he saw any),_ like a sprinter waiting for the starting gun. There's a wickedly curved knife in its hand, the blade red in the flickering candlelight.

"Well, hello there." Dean grins broad. "Sorry, hope I'm not interrupting anything."

He takes a step forward, and the demon stands, staring fixedly at him as he moves closer. When he spins his knife between his fingers, tosses it from his right hand to his left, the thing's crimson eyes never leave the blade. Scared. That's the downside of using zombies to wipe out a good eighty percent of the world's population: lets your demons go soft. Alastair would weep if he could see this.

Again he moves closer, raises his arms in a come-get-me gesture. "We gonna do this or not?" he calls out, mocking, spins the knife. The demon shifts, takes half a step forward, eyes fixed on Dean. It never sees Jo come sliding softly up behind it.

"Come on and get me, motherfucker," Dean says, and the demon snarls, and Jo raises her rifle, slamming the butt into the back of its head in a single blow that has the thing crashing to the floor.

With no hesitation, Jo follows it to the ground, silver knife out and carving the binding mark into the demon's forearm in a practiced flash. While she's on that, Dean grabs the can of spray paint he keeps in his backpack for just this purpose and starts sketching a Devils' Trap on the dusty warehouse floor, kicking over the ritual bowl as he goes.

When he straightens up, the last line of the Trap completed, Jo has the thing in a chokehold, dragging it over. It's struggling madly, manages to get its feet under it, snarling something incoherent about killing them all. Son-of-a-bitch has been an easy mark so far, but it don't pay to underestimate demons. Dean pulls his faithful pearl-handled Colt, puts a couple of bullets in the thing's knees ( _hard to kick with a pair of shattered kneecaps, even for a demon_ ) before walking over and grabbing it by the ankles.

Between him and Jo they make short work of throwing the demon into the black ring of the Trap. It goes limp instantly, a heap of limbs on the floor, glaring up at them balefully.

"Evening," Jo says, pulling her scarf down to grin savagely at the demon. "Great night for it, huh, Dean?"

"Oh yeah." He stows his pistol back in its thigh holster, swings the assault rifle and its strap off his shoulder ( _thank God, you carry one of those for two days straight and you know about it_ ) and lays it down on the ground. Retrieves his knife from where he dropped it in the process of drawing the trap. Runs the pad of his thumb over the familiar grooves of the runes etched into the bone handle.

Jo crouches to go through her backpack, carefully laying out the knives, the scalpels, the scissors, the needles and holy water, the catering-size bag of salt. The angel-sword at her hip is almost luminous in the gloom. She's humming _Back In Black_ softly to herself, one knee jiggling, the colour high in her grubby cheeks.

And, yeah, Dean knows how she feels. He's spent – fuck, is it two days now? More?– two days running his heart out to stand still. Watching civilians get torn to pieces. Shot and burned by other _humans_. Watching the relentless tide of Croats come on and on and on, unending no matter how many they ice. Watching the fall of what might be the last goddamn city in the country bar a handful of witches clinging grimly on in the wreckage of NOLA.

Watching, when you get right down to it, ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer win. Again.

Right now, the thought of just _hurting_ something – well. It's almost as appealing as it was, back in the Pit.

He interlaces his fingers, stretches out, rolls his neck. "Feeling inspired, Harvelle?"

"Oh yeah," she says, soft and dark.

In the ring of the Trap, the demon says suddenly, "Please. Please."

Dean looks at it sideways. Its meatsuit is little more than a kid, a baby-faced boy perhaps a couple of years younger than Theo. The crimson taint of its eyes has vanished. Maybe it thinks any of these things will make them hesitate. Maybe it thinks there's any room left for mercy in the world ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam has made.

"Winchester, you want the first go?"

"Rock, paper, scissors for it." It's always half a game between him and Jo, this business.

He throws paper and wins. Picks up the largest of their knives, almost a machete really ( _he likes to go big to start with, before getting down to the little details_ ), nice and heavy in his hand as he steps over the line of paint.

The demon's breathing fast now, swallowing hard and scuttling backwards as far as it can go. "P-Please, I –"

"You're going to tell me everything you know about Bela," Dean tells it, dispassionate. Inside, everything has gone calm and quiet and focused. This is what he was made for.

The demon does a double-take, mouth slack for a moment. Then it says in a rush, "I don't know anything, I'm not, I don't know that name, I can't tell you anything."

Behind Dean, Jo makes a little _ka-ching_ noise. "Yahtzee! Game on."

He's close enough now to grab the thing's chin, stroke the flat of the blade down its cheek, its throat, tilting it just enough to push through skin. "Wrong answer. Don't try and play us. That bitch is queen of the crossroads, and _you_ –" Its neck is opening now, splitting apart as easily as drawing down a zipper, "- are going to tell us every. Last. Thing. You. Know."

Jo, ever his wingman, adds, "And, if you're a lucky little hellspawn, _then_ we kill you."

* * *

Sometimes they make this kind of thing into a race, Jo and Dean do. See how quickly they can take an arrogant, posturing demon and turn it into a shivering piece of meat, haemorrhaging its secrets. Record's an hour and twelve minutes.

Tonight, though, tonight's not the time to go for the record. Sure, the sooner they finish business, the sooner they can haul ass, get back on the cracked road back to Chitaqua. But right now things are quiet. There's a roof over their heads, four walls to shelter them, a damn sight better than being exposed on the streets in the dark of the Croatoan night. Besides, breaking a demon in record time, it ain't a cakewalk. Takes a toll, physically speaking ( _the other stuff doesn't bother Dean no more_ ). A toll they can't afford, not this time.

So yeah. Not taking it slow, not exactly, but not rushing things either. While they take turns with the knife, at the other end of the warehouse, the others are taking turns to crash out and catch up a little on sleep. Lucky bastards.

He's not jealous, though. Not exactly. This, right here, there's a focus to it. A purpose. That's good.

It's been – well, he doesn't know how long it's been. Time's weird, distorted ( _Hellish, almost_ ), in his mind now. He measures by the stages they've taken the demon through: first it was insisting it knew nothing at all about Bela, said it over and over, a hysterical litany that drove Dean batshit. Then for a while it screamed, this high keening noise that came whistling through the slit of its throat. When finally the screeching stopped, it started kicking, spasmodic and futile, heels drumming against the slick floor ( _pissed Jo off, couldn't grab its feet, and feet are kind of a Harvelle speciality_ ).

Now the thing is finally still again. Limp. Putty in their hands. Quiet too, thank fuck. Dean can't stand screamers ( _in the Pit Dean was a screamer, hated 'em ever since_ ). It's sobbing, but it's doing it quietly.

Dean's pretty sure the next stage is gonna be the last. Jo thinks so, too. She's got that grim glee in her eyes, that _hell-yeah_ set to her mouth. Nearly there. Nearly there.

So it's in that quiet limp stage that the yelling starts up.

It comes out of nowhere. One minute Dean's sitting cross-legged, watching Jo at work with the sanctified silver-coated tweezers and a laid-out lung, everything quiet – the next Risa's voice is echoing through the whole goddamn warehouse. " _Croats. Croats!_ On your feet, people, come on! Come on, wake up – _Croats!_ "

Jo's head comes up like a hound on the scent. She glances over to Dean, and he nods, and then she's grabbing her rifle, setting off at a half run, no hesitation.

When Dean pushes up onto his feet, the demon lifts its head, makes this tiny mewling noise. It thinks he's gonna go after Jo, run away to batten down the hatches against the Croats. Adorable.

He ambles over to the array of well-used tools, crouches to run his fingers meditatively over them, smallest to largest and back again. Says, conversational, "Sorry, sunshine. Not getting off that easy."

The salt. Yeah, the salt. Spent a long time playing with the knives and the scissors and the scalpels. Time to change it up. Variety's the spice.

With the catering-sized bag in one hand, a stained plastic funnel in the other, he steps into the Trap. Stands straddling the demon, feet either side of its pinned-open chest. Smiles. "All ya gotta do is dish up the dirt on Bela. That's it."

The thing looks up at him, eyes huge and swollen, flayed lips fluttering soundlessly.

It never ceases to amaze Dean, the depth of the loyalty these scum show towards a thieving bitch who wouldn't know integrity if it bit her in her demonic ass. Same goes for the fanatical come-to-Jesus belief Alastair and Ruby and Meg and the rest have in a treasonous piece of shit who betrayed his own brother. Suckers, every last one of 'em.

"Aw, c'mon." Dean kneels down, leans close over the demon. Starts sprinkling salt – just a pinch, just a tickle – over Jo's careful work with that lung. He can hear yelling, most of it the wordless bellows of wounded Croats, echoes of gunfire. "A location, that's all it'll take. Her base of ops." The thing's gaze lights on him and for a moment it opens its mouth. Then slams it shut, broken teeth snapping on exposed gum. Its head rolls to the side.

No front to this one. No fucking poker face at all. Hell's standards must be slipping.

"Hey, be like that. Don't make no odds. You'll tell me in the end." He shrugs. Shifts his grip on the bag so the salt starts to come in a steady stream and the demon starts to shake beneath him. Listens to the faint rolling thunder of the battle outside. Whistles _Seek and Destroy_ under his breath. Far as he's concerned they can do this all night.

* * *

Some indeterminate time after that – he's thinking maybe they're into a trembling stage now, maybe still in the limp-and-quiet one – Jo comes back. Only briefly. Grabs her handgun and a couple of protein bars from her bag. Asks if she can take the stash of hand grenades Garrett gave to Dean.

"Well, not much good to me here, are they?" He stands up, knees popping. Watches her dig through his duffel bag until she finds the metal box stamped _US MARINE CORPS_. "It's serious shit out there, huh?"

She nods, says around the protein bar in her mouth, "Hell of a lot of Croats. I mean, we're ganking the mothers, alright, but they're coming on as fast as we can waste 'em. How many of these did they – two, four – It's the mind control thing. Gotta be. Trying to wipe the city out for good and all."

Shit. Dean passes a hand down his face, takes a step toward Jo. "You want me out there with y'all?"

Satisfied with the grenades, Jo swallows the rest of the protein bar in one great gulp. "Winchester, you stay here. Do your thing. Bigger picture, remember?"

Bigger picture. _Come on,_ think _, boy._ "Roger that." He gives her a quick salute, and she rolls her eyes, almost grins, and is gone.

At Dean's feet, the demon rolls over onto its side, and without warning vomits. Vomits copiously, thick and almost black with blood and God knows what hellish stuff. The smell is not just acidic but sulphurous, decaying, and it is all over Dean's boots and his ankles and his shins, hot and damp through his jeans. He's had more gross bodily fluids on him in his time than he ever wants to think about, but this is a new low. Jesus, when they get back he is having the longest, hottest shower of his godforsaken life.

Then he remembers that he won't, he can't, because of course there _are_ no showers at Chitaqua anymore, and he nearly ( _cries_ ) screams.

Everything else had seemed halfway bearable, the exhaustion and the misery and the corpses piled high and set alight. All that he could handle. But the feeling of that _filth_ on him, creeping in through the cracks in him where he can't ever get it _out_ , and not even being able to fucking _shower_ –

He presses his eyes closed. Bites down hard on his bottom lip. When he has the urge to ( _cry_ ) scream under control, he turns back around and kicks the demon over onto its back again.

"Oh, you are really in for it now, motherfucker," he tells it with this weird kind of calm. He stands over it like Alastair once stood over him, and he thinks idly that he's never really enjoyed this up topside, not the way he did downstairs. It's as good a time as any to start.

* * *

The fighting outside is going badly.

There's no one moment of realisation Dean can pinpoint. It creeps up on him, gradually, the awareness that the voices he can hear are a lot more panicky than he'd like, Theo and Jaeger's loud _hell yeah_ s are few and far between, and the coming of the Croats doesn't seem to be abating at all. It all just keeps on and on, and the longer it goes on, the worse it's gonna get. That's the disadvantage of being human. Go full steam ahead for a couple days, folks start fucking up, no way around it, and when that sets in it kinda chips away at the whole _we have machine guns_ advantage.

He couldn't tell you when he starts consciously trying to pick up the pace of his work, but he does. Sooner he finishes up with this piece of shit, sooner he can get out there and help his people, sooner they're done with this whole charade.

Breaking point is so close now, he can smell it on the air. Tantalising. One of those smells that's better than the thing itself.

Yet somehow the demon doesn't cave. It lies there underneath him, breathing in little whimpers, and there's surrender written all over it, but it doesn't cave. Tells him nothing. Maybe holding on to some depth of strength he'd never have guessed it had ( _crossroads demons are the weakest ones, Alastair always said so_ ), maybe just plain stubborn. After all, good old stubbornness kept Dean on the rack as long as any moralistic bullshit did.

Whatever. Doesn't matter. It's gonna break, one way or another.

Dean's focus is so tight, so intent, that when the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt chirps for the first time in hours, he startles and nearly takes the demon's left eye out by accident. "Shit – shit –"

" _Winchester, do you copy? We are – "_ There's a burst of static that renders what he's pretty sure is Garrett's voice inaudible, and he curses, smacking the side of the handset with the heel of his hand. Damn things are almost useless. Give him an hour and a half with a screwdriver, some wire, and a halfway decent soldering iron and he'd have 'em fit for purpose again, but of course that's not gonna happen. Fuck. " _Repeat, everything south of the Missouri River will be sealed off in two hours. Do you copy?"_

Well, fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. He thumbs the transmit button. "Yeah, yeah, two hours to get our asses north of the river, I copy," he says, dry-mouthed. Deserves some kind of medal for not adding _you cowardly son-of-a-bitch._

" _Good man_ ," comes the grainy reply, and then the transmission cuts off.

"Go fuck yourself," Dean says pleasantly. He tosses the walkie-talkie away and it skitters across the warehouse floor to fetch up against his duffel. Rotates his aching right shoulder once, then crouches down to get back to work, hands moving almost automatically while his mind races.

That – well, it puts a different spin on things. Changes the situation.

Two hours. He needs to warn the others – unless they already know – Jo's got a walkie-talkie too, and not for nothing. They need to know – but what if they panic? If Jaeger loses his nerve, if Ted freaks? Cas will want to haul ass, say it's too much of a risk and how can Dean even _think_ it's worth the risk – they could split up, but – no – not gonna happen.

He's barely aware of the long serrated knife in his hand, the curling lines he's tracing across a stolen scalp. If they can hold on, if they can just hold on long enough –

Then, footsteps. A voice. "Dean. Dean!"

It's Theo, sprinting through the gloom of the warehouse toward him, rifle slung over his shoulder. His face is drawn with exhaustion, slick with sweat, his dark eyes wide and overbright. Dean steps out from the Devil's Trap to meet him, sticks his knife through his belt and holds his hands up as though calming a spooked horse.

"Dean – Jo sent me, she just got a call over the –"

"Walkie-talkies, right?" He cuts Theo off before he can get up a head of steam, let his mouth run away with himself. "Yeah, I heard." Steps closer, putting them close enough to murmur. Not like the thing in the Trap is in any condition to be pulling mind-games or whatever, but still, demon psychic shit. That's a thing. No point giving it more information than they have to. "What does Jo say, what does she wanna do?"

Theo hesitates, his gaze faltering over Dean's shoulder, swallowing visibly. Dean snaps his fingers, gives the kid his best John Winchester commanding-officer stare, and Theo shakes himself, looks back to Dean. "She says, if you reckon you can do what – what you need to do – in time, then we oughta hold on. Wait till you're done before we bail."

"Right." Dean rubs at the back of his neck. It'll take them half an hour to make it to safety, and that's if they don't get bogged down in Croats ( _or civilians_ ). Which gives him an hour and a half at the absolute outside – but fuck it. He can do it. He _can_. He came up under the Grand Inquisitor, for god's sake. "Okay. Yeah, I can do it. But look, Theo, what's the situation out there? I can tell it ain't great, but is it FUBAR or what? I mean, _can_ y'all hold out for that long?"

The way Theo glances away, shifting on his feet, tells Dean that, oh yeah, it's pretty FUBAR alright. He grits his teeth, is about to say, to _hell with it, you-all make tracks, I'll take my chances,_ when Theo looks back at him. And it's not the freaked-out, high-strung teenage boy he sees, but the _man_ who's tearing through Bobby's old library and will make a damn fine hunter if he lives long enough. "This, what you're doing, this is what matters. We've got to hold out, that's all there is to it, right?"

"Right." He nods, claps Theo's shoulder. "Alright, go on, get out of my hair."

Kid doesn't need telling twice. Nods his head sharply and runs off, back the way he came.

Dean stretches his right arm, works the shoulder, wincing as the bullet graze starts to bleed again. Closes his eyes, just for a moment. Just long enough to think himself back to the Pit ( _razor thrumming in his hand, alive, pain painting itself in a thousand colours across his eyelids, all the years of that other, longer life_ ) and all he learnt there. Doesn't take long.

Then he pulls the filthy knife from out of his belt, and gets back to work.

* * *

He's not sure if it's his imagination or what, but the noise from outside the warehouse seems to Dean to be getting louder. There are lulls every now and again, an ebb and a flow, but always it comes back. The yelling and the furious Croat screeching rising on a crescendo. The rattle of gunfire driving his heartbeat along with it.

Night has well and truly fallen now, and he should be cold, or at least cool. The stifling humidity and low sullen heat of the day is gone, but he doesn't feel it. His skin is sticky with ( _that goddamn demon's filth_ ) sweat, tension buzzing over his skin, the deadline getting closer with every breath, pushing him on and on and on.

Before, time was a featureless inch-by-inch creep. Now it's a ticking clock. Sand slipping through his fingers ( _a world too far gone for saving_ ).

The demon is writhing under his hands. It really shouldn't – only hurting itself worse, twisting at the very skin and tendons Dean and Jo have stretched and pinned and torn before, arching up into the knife, shaking and driving the blade deeper. But it can't help itself. If it weren't for the time pressure, Dean'd just _hold_ it and let it break itself, a hammer beating itself against his anvil.

He remembers this stage, from the other side. Losing all sense. All reason. How he'd felt ( _Alastair_ ) Hell in his blood. How ( _pure_ ) primal it had been.

The end is so very near.

But not here yet. He hasn't done it yet.

From outside, the sound of shattering glass. What he's almost sure is the gasping roar of igniting flames. Molotov cocktails. And his people don't have any.

Voices all shouting over one another, the demon's wet panting, shots – and, clear as a bell, Cas's piercing whistle, twice on the same note. Dean's signal. Then, and she must be right on the other side of the wall for Dean to hear her, Jo: "Hurry it the fuck up in there!"

"I'm trying, Harvelle," Dean yells back. She doesn't have to reply, _try harder_. He can hear ( _Dad saying it_ ) her saying it, echoing in his mind. He twists his wrist savagely, grins in grim satisfaction as the thing flails, thrashes from side to side, a fish impaled on his blade.

"Tell me," Dean grates out. His mouth is dry, lips bitten to blood. He was enjoying this at some point, but now, now he just wants this over. This whole fucking thing. "Tell me where Bela is."

The demon's head rolls on its split-open neck. Rolls to one side, then the other, back and forth, searching for an escape route that isn't there. Dean grips its filthy chin in his left hand, holds it still, forces it to face him. It's trembling under his fingers, its mouth yawning open, eyes flicking uncontrollably between infernal red and stolen brown, flash-flash-flash.

"Tell me."

The cacophony outside peaks again – gunfire rolling like a summer thunderhead, screaming, so much screaming –

"Tell me where her base is. Now!"

And suddenly, above it all, a voice – a voice he hears in his ( _nightmares_ ) dreams – Jo, not even screaming but _roaring_ , a bellow of rage and agony and hatred –

Dean grabs the demon by the hair, the throat, slams its head against the concrete floor. " _Tell me and we can END this._ "

Its eyes stutter once more, twice, then settle on bottomless crimson. It licks what's left of its lips. Says, in a voice blasted and ruined, "Houses. Three. Three safe houses. Flagstaff, Arizona. Uh-uh-Upstate New York. And … Dakota. North Dakota. Up near the. The Canada coast. Border? Canada border. She. She travels round. Always. But those … she'll come back to."

Flagstaff, Arizona. Upstate New York. And the north of North Dakota, near the Canadian border. Two day-long drives and the fucking _Canadian border_. Unbelievable. Talk about being between the devil and the deep blue sea. That bitch. That contrary goddamn bitch.

But still. Still. Now he knows. And better yet, now he can bail.

Stabbing the demon through the heart, watching its eyes and mouth flare with orange light, is practically a relief. Dean's on his feet in an instant, wraps the tools ( _still dirty, Dad'd have his ass_ ) in a sheet and stuffs them in his duffel, along with the salt and the holy water and the can of spray paint. The demon-killing knife is back in his belt, his pistol at his thigh, bag over one shoulder, rifle over the other. Flashlight to see his way out.

Running's a relief after hours hunched over like that. He makes it out in double time, just soon enough to see Risa and Ted gank what seems to be the last few stragglers of a wave of Croats. Once those go down, no more appear to take their place. The tide is ebbing, for now. Time to go.

"Okay, people, I got what we need, let's move," he calls as he steps out onto the body-strewn warehouse parking lot. He sweeps the beam of his flashlight to take in his battered little band, and whatever he was going to say dies on his lips.

Theo is leaning against the wall, gun forgotten at his feet. His left side is bloodied from armpit to waist, his blue t-shirt purpled with it. Cas is pressing his hands against the wound, doing his best to wrap the rags kept in their bags for this very purpose around Theo's middle.

The others are all scattered around nearby. With one exception. Jo.

She's off to one side, separated. Doubled over with her hands braced on her knees, a small pool of vomit spattered on the floor, rifle hanging heavy from her right shoulder. The scarf that concealed her face is pulled down and untied, the ends fluttering in the faint breeze. There's a bloody wound where her right shoulder meets her neck.

Even through the blood and the swelling, even from twenty feet away, in the stark glare of the flashlight Dean can tell it's a bite. A human bite.

For a moment he freezes. Caught in time. Inside some part of him is screaming _no no no no_ _NO._ She can't. He can't do this, not alone, not without her, he can't, he won't, there's got to be a way, there has _got_ to be another way –

Which is exactly what he thought about ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam.

He can hear his father saying _you know what you have to do, boy_ , and he does. This time he's going to listen.

Dean shakes himself, claps his hands. "Okay, first things first, we need to move. Theo, can you walk? Cas, if you help – awesome. Anyone else hurt, speak now or forever hold your peace." No one says anything. He shoots a glance at Jo, raises an eyebrow. She looks at him levelly, taps her wrist where a watch would sit, and raises a finger.

One hour. One hour until the Army seals off half the city and them with it. One hour, give or take, until the Croatoan virus reaches the brain.

He nods at her, turns back to the others. "Risa, you take point. The rest of you stick close together. Me and Jo bring up the rear. Go."

Risa hesitates, looking at Jo. From what's visible of her masked face, she's caught between horror and longing, and there isn't time for either. Dean opens his mouth to tell her as much but Jo beats him to the draw.

"Go," she rasps, and then jerks her chin sharply at Dean. "If I turn, I'll be dead before I hit the ground. You don't have time for this – _go_!"

For a moment Risa just stares at her, eyes huge in her grimy face, and Dean thinks, _oh shit, here it comes_. Then she nods once and turns on her heel. "Okay, come on."

She sets off out onto the empty streets at a loping half-run, followed by Cas supporting Theo, Ted and Jaeger flanking them, rifles up and ready. And then, several paces behind them ( _damage limitation if Jo does turn too soon_ ), Jo and Dean, facing backwards to cover the others as they retreat.

The flight back up to the river is a blur. Skirting around the blazing ruins of what used to be downtown. Clambering over the cars, abandoned like shed snakeskin, that clog the roads. Breaking into sprints when bricks and glass bottles start to fly. Croats converging on them from side-streets and round corners and not breaking his stride as he guns them down. The constant paranoid back-and-forth scan of every boarded-up building, every alleyway, heart in his mouth as he waits for the next ambush, half his attention always at his left, on the woman who he used to trust as totally as he trusts his gun hand.

And then, all of a sudden, they're at the river.

Dean had expected the bank to be teeming, that they'd have to fight their way through a mass of hysterical civilians. It's not like that. There are people here and there, little knots of them milling about under the Army's floodlights, smoking in empty doorways, pawing through left-behind cars, talking to the grim-faced soldiers on the bridge checkpoints, making their way across. After the interminable hours of chaos and violence it seems surreal. Dreamlike.

Risa leads them up toward the nearest bridge. As they pass, the looters stop, straightening up and affecting innocence as though they were cops ( _do cops still exist here? Maybe, until three days ago_ ). Two other groups – one obviously a family, one a bunch of college-age kids – stop in their tracks to let them go past. Must be the assault rifles. Huh. Handy.

The soldier manning the checkpoint sees them coming, raises a hand in an acknowledgement that Risa returns. He's flanked by two men holding machineguns who Dean thinks he maybe recognises from the abortive attempt to sweep the city. All three of them look haggard as hell, if not as bashed-up as Dean's people.

"You're Garrett's back-up, yeah? Okay, no papers – just step up and lemme check your eyes –"

At that, Risa turns to look back at Dean, at Jo. Even from that briefest glance of her half-masked face, Dean gets a flash of panic, of sheer _fear_ , like he's never seen from her before. Not getting jumped by Croats out on supply runs, not when things went to shit in New Orleans, not crouching down behind a shot-out truck with Molotovs and bullets filling the air. And he gets it. He does. Because that kind of fear, that's something that can be fought. You grit your teeth and keep your head down and your trigger finger steady and you fight.

Once someone's got your heart in their hand, got Croatoan in their blood, well. _That_ can't be fought.

" _She's_ been bit!" It's one of the two goons. In an instant he and his partner have their guns trained on Jo. Risa flinches visibly. Cas holds up the hand not looped around Theo's middle in a _stand-down_ gesture, starts to say something that the soldier bulls over, snarling, "Shut the fuck up, that's a fucking _Croat_ –"

Jesus. Cas is squinting at the guy like he'd dearly love to smite him, and Dean can _feel_ Jo tensing beside him. This is about to get out of hand. "Yeah, no shit Sherlock, gold star for observation," he says loudly. Reaches out to grab Jo's arm ( _the left, he don't need infected blood on him_ ) tight. "I'mma take care of it. Chill."

"Oh, you're gonna take _care_ of it," the son-of-a-bitch sneers, incredulous.

"That's what I said," Dean snaps. He turns, pulls the rifle off Jo's shoulder and tugs sharply on her arm. "Come on."

For a moment, she resists, digging her heels in and refusing even to look away from Risa, let alone move. Then she says in a voice scraped raw, "Goodnight, darlin'." Then, as Risa covers her face with her hands, Jo lets Dean pull her away.

He walks her back the way they came, quickly. Even through the shirt her skin is hot to the touch. There are tremors running through her and he doesn't know if it's from emotion or from the virus and he doesn't want to have to find out.

They weave back through the empty-shell cars, ragged civilians backing away fearfully as they pass. Dean takes a turn down a back alley, gets them away from the glare of floodlights and staring strangers. Lets go of her arm. She takes maybe ten paces, then stops. Faces him.

For some time neither of them says anything. There's a baby crying back by the bridge, its wails thin and high, but otherwise it's very quiet. The roar of devouring flames and starving Croats nothing but a faraway hum.

Eventually, Dean clears his throat. "Give me your gun."

She snorts something that could almost be a laugh. Reaches down to unstrap the pistol from her thigh holster, ejects the magazine and tosses it in his direction.

It lands on the floor near Dean's left foot and he snap-kicks it behind him. "And the angel-knife."

Another snorted laugh. When she pulls the long slim blade from its custom sheath, she gives it a rapid baton twirl, nice and flashy, a show-off to the end, then throws it almost casually to her right. It hits a boarded-up door, buries itself up to the hilt.

Suddenly Dean is hit by the thought that now Cas won't have anyone to compete at knife-throwing with ( _not that he cares to do that much these days_ ), how Cas will miss it, how Dean will miss watching them at it. Of all the things, that's what he thinks of: long-shadowed evenings, sitting in the mud and grass, Rachael Weiss at his side, watching Jo and Cas and the ease with which they sent those heavy silver blades flying through the air. They were both so goddamn beautiful like that.

Then Jo says, "Dean. Dean, listen."

God, her voice. It sounds worse than his felt after crawling out of a fucking pine box and walking five miles to the nearest gas store for so much as a drop of water to drink. "All ears."

"The demon told you where to find Bela, yeah?"

He nods, and she does too, wincing and grabbing at her neck when the movement agitates her wound.

 "Well, you do what you gotta. You track her down, you get the Colt, do whatever." She looks him dead in the eye, fierce as he's ever seen her. Face tracked with dirt and sheened with sweat, eyes rimmed blood-red. Jaw set tight. "Do whatever you need to. And don't – don't you let Risa or Castiel give you any bullshit about – about how you do it. About the knife. They don't know what we know. Okay?"

He remembers sitting on a snow-covered roof under an unending starless sky. _You can't go up against the Devil and expect to keep your hands clean. If we're out there, and I get bit, I want you to shoot me._

"Okay." He nods. Takes his faithful handgun from his holster, never looking away from Jo. Runs the pads of his fingers over the familiar curls of the engravings.

Jo's lips pull back, baring her teeth in a feral grin. "And you give your brother one from me, Winchester."

He smiles back, his rackman's smile. If there's anyone who can see that smile, it's her. "Oh, I promise." He thumbs the safety off. He's so calm. Nothing left to panic about. The worst has already happened.

"Good. Good." Jo gives a full-bodied shake, like a dog might after getting wet. Closes her eyes and takes three deep breaths, chest heaving, then opens them again, grins widely. "I'll see you on the other side."

"Yeah," Dean says quietly, "Yeah, I think you will."

Then he swings his right arm up and fires. A single shot. It hits before Jo has time to open her mouth, to scream. Right between the eyes. Perfect.

The body crumples soundlessly to the floor. For a few seconds, one foot jerks, twitches, then is still.

Dean turns around and picks up the handgun lying behind him, tucks it into the waistband of his jeans. Walks over to the vacant building on his right, braces one hand against the wall and yanks the long silver dagger ( _the one he took from Zachariah's dead hand and gave to Jo_ ) out of the wooden planks nailed over the doorway. That gets shoved through his belt alongside his demon knife.

For just a moment he pauses, looking down dispassionately at the body. It doesn't feel any different than any other time he's stood in the night with a corpse at his feet. There's nothing left of _Jo_ here, so far as he can see. Nothing but meat. They're all meat in the end.

Funny, how that happens.

* * *

 

Dean crosses the bridge without incident.

On the other side he finds organised chaos not unlike the military's camp back in Atlanta, except bigger. Bigger, and with more civilians. Tents, portakabins, Devils' Traps spray-painted everywhere, people running this way and that and shouting and cursing and commands coming distorted and deafening over loudspeakers and he can't focus on _any_ of it.

It's been the longest fucking day of his life and there's too much _noise_ and too many _people_ and he just _stands_ there. Frozen. Heart pounding, frantic, every instinct blaring an alarm, _red alert, grab your gun, danger, hide, run, shoot, kill,_ and it's all he can do not to listen.

Then somebody grabs his arm and he jumps about three feet through the air before he realises it's an exhausted-looking woman wearing an armband marked _MEDIC_ over her filthy uniform. "Winchester, yes? Your people are along here, come."

He follows her, so glad for once to have somebody else make the decisions for him, for that weight to lift for even a moment. She leads him out of the floodlit madness of the base camp's main area, down the side of one of the largest tents and back around to a stretch of road with what looks like dozens of parked military vehicles arrayed along it. They all of them look in bad shape, and Dean's fingertips are aching for a ( _knife_ ) wrench, to get under their hoods and fix 'em up like he used to in Bobby's scrapyard.

It takes him an extended, sleep-deprived moment to recognise his cars ( _well, the ones O'Neill gave him, and Jo's truck, not_ his _, not Baby_ ) and the tilt of Cas's head and realise he's here. Back with them.

"Thanks," he tells the medic absently, and jogs over, his aching legs protesting at every step.

Theo is sitting on the hood of one of the armoured cars, his chin drooping down on his chest, Jaeger with an arm wrapped round his waist to hold him up. He's shirtless, and Cas is bent over his left side, face creased with concentration as he stitches the gash down Theo's ribs. Ted is pacing up and down between the car and Jo's truck, his face tight and his hands twitching in a way that Dean associates with civilians about to lose their shit. Risa is on the ground with her head in her hands.

He sizes them all up, makes the decision. No-brainer.

When Dean says Risa's name, she doesn't react. He touches her shoulder and she startles. "Easy. Just want a word."

She looks up at him, and he's seen Risa lose control only once, and that was after she'd found out the last member of her family was dead and was several shots of absinthe down, but damned if she doesn't look near to it now. Hasn't been crying, at least not that he can tell, but there's just – well. Dean knows despair when he sees it, that's all.

But she stands up slowly, like it costs her dear, and lets him walk them a few paces away from the others.

"Here." He holds out Jo's pistol ( _not as gorgeous as his own, but a custom job, distinctive_ ), and after staring at it for a moment, she takes it from him mechanically. He pats her gloved hand, once. "Listen. We ain't out of the woods yet, and I need you to hold it together. The others, they're close to bugging out, Ted especially. Soon as Cas has Theo patched up, we're gonna get this show on the road and I need to know you got my back. Tears, whatever, that waits til we're back at Chitaqua. Okay?"

Risa closes her eyes, presses a hand over her face, takes a deep, juddering breath. Then she looks at the gun in her hand, a long, long look. Finally she nods tightly. "Okay."

He gives her his best attempt at a smile, squeezes her shoulder.

As they head back over to Cas and the rest, she walks with her jaw set and her shoulders squared like she's going into battle. Like she's getting ready to carry the weight of the world. Yeah, she's gonna make it. That's one less breakdown Dean's gotta worry about.

Harsh, maybe, but sometimes you can only cope because you fucking _have_ to, because you know there's other lives on the line. Dean's known that since he was four years old.

"Cas, you about done there?" he calls.

"About, yeah." Cas gestures at one of the bags on the floor with his left hand, never glancing away from his work. "Pass me the – the –"

"I gotcha." Dean grabs the opened bottle of surgical alcohol, puts it in Cas's hand. Takes the bloodied needle and dental floss that Cas holds out. Fast work. Dude's a pretty damn competent field medic these days, more than Dean would've believed a few years back. Hell, he can follow the learning curve by his own scars.

When the alcohol's poured down his wound, Theo's head rocks back, teeth digging into his lower lip, nostrils flaring, but he doesn't scream. Thank god. Dean can't stand screamers.

Of course, Theo's barely conscious. Losing that much blood tends to do that to a person. He can't stand, and it takes Jaeger and Dean to carry him round and lay him out on the backseat of the pick-up truck. There's a blanket that belonged to Jo ( _used to wrap herself up in it, when they'd sit up til the wee hours, or winter evenings_ ) in the footwell, and Dean pulls it up to cover the kid.

Risa tosses him the keys to the truck ( _not Jo's truck, not anymore_ ), and he doesn't question it. Throws her the keys to his armoured car in exchange, then goes to get his duffel. He digs out his bottle of amphetamines and, thank fuck, there's still a few tablets left. He knocks two back dry, holds the bottle up.

"Alright, everyone who's driving, dose up. Everyone else, grab your shit. Let's get the fuck out of here."

* * *

It takes two hours to drive out of Kansas City. Even being able to pull rank and yell at civilians to pull the fuck over and let them the fuck through. The north half of the city is Croat free, but the streets are still littered with bodies, with burned-out cars and the trash that accumulates when half a million people wall themselves off for a year, with people fleeing the south half, with people fleeing the city altogether.

By the time they make it past the remnants of the last quarantine wall, Dean's pulse is beating a steady, agonising drumbeat against the inside of his skull. Driving in cities sucks out loud at the best of times ( _he's a small-town, open-road boy, always_ ), let alone during the fucking Apocalypse. It's full dark, and his eyes are streaming with the effort of focusing on the road.

How long's he been awake, now? Who the hell knows. Too fucking long.

Risa's driving one of the armoured cars out in front, Jaeger with her. In Dean's rearview he can see Cas at the wheel of the other, chatting away to Ted. Maybe he's putting all that New Age love-guru bullshit to good use, calming the man down. Dean lives in hope.

What he wouldn't do for a radio station right now, even one of those hellfire-sermon ones he used to pick up down in the Bible Belt. Even a goddamn indie rock station. Something. Anything to fill up the strung-out spaces in his mind.

Instead he talks to Theo. It's a real one-sided conversation, but he figures the slurred _uh-huh_ s and _yeah_ s and _wha's_ he gets are keeping the kid from, like, going into a coma ( _don't think bout that time after Azazel, bleeding in the backseat and Sammy driving like a madman_ ) or some shit. And it's better than nothing but silence and white-line fever. Gotta be better than that.

So he just … talks. About hunting. All those other drives. All those other roads. Spent his whole life driving, when he thinks about it. Driving around with Dad, with ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam, with Cas. With Jo. Almost tears up once or twice, talking about back before the Croats inherited the earth, him and Castiel tooling around with Jo and Ellen. Yeah. Them were the days. And if he does tear up, maybe lets one or two escape, who's gonna call him on it? Ain't like Theo's paying much attention.

* * *

The sky is just barely starting to lighten on the faraway Midwestern horizon when Risa sticks her arm out the window of the car ahead, signals Dean to pull over. He cranks down his own window and passes the signal back to Cas before stopping the truck.

"Figured we could all do with grabbing a couple hours of shuteye," Risa tells him, climbing down from the driver's seat of the armoured car and walking around to the backseat.

He doesn't say anything, just lifts his chin in acknowledgement. It's always his instinct to keep going, power through and crash out at the other end, but she's not wrong. The others ain't so used to that, even Cas. Be a hell of a thing to make it out of Kansas City alive and then get taken out by someone falling asleep at the wheel, god _damn_.

Dean sits on the hood of the truck, draws his knees up under his chin ( _don't think about the dried demon vomit on the jeans, don't think about it_ ). Digs into the pocket of his jeans for the engraved lighter and the crumpled pack of Marlboros that he found in the glove compartment ( _Jo's for-a-rainy-day stash_ ). Lights one up and takes a long, deep drag, closing his eyes into it.

It's cool, out in the early morning darkness, even in the dog days of summer. Dead quiet, too. Peaceful.

God, it feels so good to just … stop. He's been _on_ for so long that even the patient, steady vigilance needed for keeping watch is a relief. When they've made it back alive he'll sleep. Probably for a week. For now he's on watch.

He tips his head back and exhales. Rotates his bad shoulder. Looks out across the absolute darkness of the Great Plains.

The night sky is huge, still engulfed by storm clouds that make it a starless void. And he keeps looking for the horizon, trying to pick out that point where earth meets space. Keeps thinking about the vastness of the land beneath him, stretching out to the Atlantic in the East, the Pacific in the West. It used to be a comfort to him, thinking of America and the sheer size of it, that he might never in his life see all of it. Now it just makes him feel sick. All those thousands of lonely miles, and how many people left walking them now? How many will be left to see the year out?

And how many Croats? How many _demons_?

He wonders if his brother's in this country now, walking down some empty street, all in white.

_I owe you one from Jo, you son-of-a-bitch_.

A car door clicking shut behind him makes Dean turn, craning his neck. In the darkness he can just make out Cas walking over, dragging his feet and hunching his shoulders the way he does when he's beat. "Hey, man."

"Hello, Dean." Some things never change. Cas leans against the truck, perching on the edge of the hood, beside Dean. "You should be sleeping. I can keep watch."

"Nah, can't sleep. I'm still kinda wired, you know?"

It's true. That's the thing about amphetamines, even when the manic spike of the high evens out, no matter how quiet things are, he can't stop thinking. No way to turn it off. Not without going real heavy on the booze or breaking out the emergency Valium supply, but getting out of his skull like that is a loss of control he just cannot afford these days.

"Mm." Cas shifts slightly, his shoulder knocking against Dean's knee.

Absently, Dean toys with Jo's lighter, rubbing his thumb over the Devils' Trap engraved on it, flicking at the wheel. The glow of the flame catches over Cas's face, gleaming in his eyes, casting heavy shadows beneath them. For the first time, he looks old. Not ancient or timeless, the way Castiel used to look when all that alien heavenly power was drawn tight around him. Not old in an angel way, but old in a mortal way. Lines carved deep in his worn-out face. Old the way Dean feels old.

They've been through so much. So fucking much, and they've only survived it by being together. And somehow, lately, Dean lost sight of that ( _lost sight of_ them _)_ , what with all the girls and Cas being perpetually wasted and Dean so wrapped up in the Colt thing.

He's reached the end of his cigarette. He tosses the butt, fumbles for the battered pack, shakes another out and lights up. On impulse he holds the pack out to Cas. "Smoke?"

Cas squints at them. "Are those – that's the lighter Bobby gave to Jo." His voice is flat, toneless.

"Yeah." She didn't get the hunter's funeral she deserved, and Dean ain't the care and share sort, but this? Well, to him this seems a pretty damn appropriate way to remember the girl. Sharing actual cigarettes ( _rare as gold dust these days_ ) while they stand guard together. Like the way he remembers his dad whenever he cleans his guns in the ritual John taught him.

Something Dean can't read flickers in Cas's face, and his mouth goes thin, twists. "No, thank you."

So, the guy practically lights one joint off of the previous one, but _this_ he gets all prissy about? "Suit yourself."

Cas gives him this sideways look, shakes his head in what Dean thinks might actually be disappointment. Pushes up from the hood of the truck, sticks his hands in the pockets of his jeans and walks away. Says, over his shoulder. "Well, if you're not gonna sleep, I sure am."

And, fine. That's fine. It is.

Dean flicks Jo's lighter, exhales a long trail of smoke. Looks out at the vast emptiness of a world that is dying by degrees.

Bela is out there. The Colt is out there. He'll end this, with Cas beside him or without.

That's all he has now. All that matters.


	12. The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas shakes his head, leaning back against the rickety fence. "When you're going after Lucifer, then I'll help you. But this? _Torture_? Sorry, no. I can't stop you doing it, but I'm sure as hell not gonna join you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: NSFW. Also contains a violent altercation between Cas & Dean. [It's not prolonged or extremely violent, but I wanted to warn nonetheless.]

_'I only wish you weren't my friend, then I could hurt you in the end. I never claimed to be a Saint.'_

* * *

By the time they arrive back at Chitaqua, Theo is running a fever. He manages to make it through the camp and into his cabin on his own feet, leaning heavily on Dean. There are several boxes of out-of-date antibiotics stashed away in Chuck's little hoard, and in the absence of anyone with actual medical training, Dean makes an executive decision and gives the kid four of the pills. Just to be on the safe side. It's no worse than anything Dean's come down with after a long, intense hunt, certainly nothing he'd bother going to a drop-in clinic with. Probably be fine after a good night's sleep.

But in the morning, the fever's worse. Theo's borderline delirious, trying to tell Dean about some chick named Alison ( _dead sister, dead girlfriend, who knows_ ), and you could fry an egg on his forehead. The flesh around the sewn-up gash on his ribs is inflamed, red and hot to the touch.

Which means this is serious shit. Way past the point where even Dad would give in and head for the nearest hospital.

Except there are no hospitals anymore.

All they have are expired pills and wild guesses at the appropriate doses. Canned soup that Theo brings right back up. Bottles of water cooled in the ancient fridge to keep him hydrated and wash him off.

It's not enough.

Dean spends the first day in Theo's little cabin, trying futilely to keep him cool, keep something down ( _kid's even sicker than Sam was when he caught mono)_. Telling him _you're fine_ , _you're at Chitaqua, you're safe_ , when he's lucid. Wondering how many pills he dares make the kid swallow.

By midnight, Theo's tangled sheets are slick with cold sweat, pus leaking pale from his wound, skin burning, eyelids closed and fluttering. The cabin is muggy with the smell of sickness. He's not gonna make it, that much is obvious. Whatever the infection is, it's in his blood and it's just a matter of time.

And so Dean leaves. Retreats to the cabin with the radio, to the pendulum and the maps and the notes. Over the next few days Cas ( _who stays sober, miracle of miracles_ ) and Erin and Chuck and Jane sit up with Theo in shifts. Twelve-year-old Emma Weiss barely leaves the side of her makeshift big brother. Rachael Weiss is glued to Dean, silently shadowing him with a persistence she hasn't had since right after her mother bit it.

The camp is quiet with anticipation. With dread. Despite Cas's accusations ( _don't give a shit, heartless, bastard_ ) when he comes to bed in the wee hours, shadows deep under his careworn eyes, Dean feels it too. Can barely focus on place-names and patterns for the thought of the teenage boy sweating and puking his life out less than a hundred yards away.

But there's nothing he can do for Theo, and he's ( _finally, finally_ ) got a decent lead on Bela and the Colt and the chance to stop everything. To make sure that poor damn kid is the last death to be laid at Dean's door. Last of billions ( _Ellen, Pete, Bobby, Jo_ , _every single casualty of Croatoan)_ but hell, better late than never.

When Cas appears in the door of the radio cabin, white-faced and squinting, Dean steels himself. According to Jane, the boy's been worsening, wandering, the lucid moments ever fewer and further between. The end's near.

But what Cas says in his scraped-raw, worried-sick wreck of a voice is, "The fever's broken. He's taking soup. Might make it yet."

The rush of relief is so intense Dean can't process it, can only stare blankly as Cas waits for a reply, then shakes his head and retreats. Rachael jumps up from the chair beside Dean and runs out after Cas, pigtails streaming behind her.

Dean sits back. Passes a faintly trembling hand down his face. Breathes and breathes and breathes.

That kid. That fucking smart-assed, scrawny kid they dragged off of the bloodied streets of Atlanta, out of the jaws of Croatoan – he's gone and done it again. Beat the odds.

"Theo, you son-of-a-bitch," he says aloud. "You awesome son-of-a-bitch." He grins, though there's no one to see, and for once the smile feels real.

* * *

Three days later, Theo staggers into the cabin. He doesn't so much sit down as collapse into a chair. "So," he says, breathing heavily from just the short walk. "What've we got?"

Dean exchanges a glance with Risa. They've been sitting around what Dean thinks of as the war table, trying to make sense of the pendulum's mad scribblings, narrow down the location of Bela's safehouse at the Canadian border. Could sure do with another pair of eyes ( _since God knows Cas won't help_ ), but for all he's walking and talking, Theo was on his freaking deathbed only days ago.

"For the love of God, go back to bed," Risa tells him.           

Theo scowls instantly. Seventeen-year-olds, you can't tell 'em anything. "Fuck that, I'm fine."

"Hey, watch the language, sunshine," Dean tells him, jerking his head at little Rachael, sitting on the floor scrawling Devils' Traps and stick-figure Croats on scraps of paper.

That gets him an elaborate adolescent roll of the eyes. "For real though. C'mon, old man, I want in on this. Where y'all at?"

Dean narrows his eyes. Theo's skin and bone, thinner even than he was after weeks in that godawful refugee camp down in Alabama, his shirt hanging off him. His dark skin has lost its usual rich warmth, looks pallid and drained, sheened with sweat from the exertion of dragging his ass all of a hundred yards. Yeah, Dean wants to agree with Risa, send the idjit back to bed and feed him up until he's a livewire of restless energy again.

But that's just the protective ( _big-brother_ ) instinct that runs deep in the marrow of his bones. The pathetic part of him that looks at Rachael and Emma and Theo ( _and Cas_ ) and wants to shelter an innocence that hasn't been there for so very long.

This is ( _Lucifer's_ ) Sam's world now. Get with the programme or die.

He pushes the North Dakota road atlas he's been studying over to Theo. "So, we know there's a safehouse just south of the border …"

* * *

The oppressive heat of the long sultry summer fades away to a crisp coolness, and the leaves on the endless trees that surround Chitaqua start to turn. It's pretty beautiful, actually. Lifts Dean's spirits a little, every time he emerges alone from his and Cas's cabin in the pale morning, every time he calls it a night and leaves the radio cabin with his head throbbing and eyes watering.

They're making progress, he and Risa and Theo, they are. Inch by painstaking inch.

Thing is, even with their search narrowed down by what Dean learnt in Kansas City, North Dakota has over 300 miles of Canadian border, and the entire area is red-hot with demon activity. Before Dean fine-tuned Theo's tracer spell, the pendulum couldn't keep up, swinging around so crazily that it tore the map. It's kinda like looking for a needle in a haystack.

With any big hunt like this, Dean's first response is to get out there. Run reconnaissance, once you've got a few possible locations, stake 'em out. And it works, he's brought down vampire nests and werewolf packs and a small horde of white-eyed demons that way. But that was Before.

The border was militarised back in early 2012, when the first small-town reports of Croatoan started creeping in. The virus got there in the end, of course, but from everything Dean's heard over the wire, the kill zone is still in operation. Call him a coward, but he ain't going near that without more solid intel. Stakes are far too high to run into this half-cocked.

So research it is.

Watching for the patterns in the scrawls of the pendulum. Matching up the hotspots with the various Devils' Gates and Hell-Mouths and unhallowed graveyards listed in Bobby's ancient notes. Sketching out what looks like a roadmap for demons, half interstates and highways, half creepy-ass Hell magic sites. Slow work, but they're getting there. If it wasn't so goddamn exhausting, if it wasn't for the weight on his shoulders, Dean'd say it was pretty awesome. Even Cas ( _when he deigns to show his face_ ) has to admit it's impressive.

Sometime in late September, maybe early October ( _no point keeping track of the date these days_ ), Dean figures it's time. The cabin's walls are a patchwork of pinned-up charts and notes, connected by coloured thread in true ( _Sam_ ) John Winchester style. The tracking spells and book work have gotten them as far as they can go for now.

It's time for the dirty work again, and Dean doesn't even know if he's been dreading it or longing for it. If he even cares anymore.

* * *

There's no Jo.

There's no Jo to go with him, and no Jo sitting beside him on the hood of his car to plan the thing out, and no Jo to trade off the knife with, and no Jo to catch his eye by the campfire in the evening when the civilians are passing around the food and he can't stop thinking of how the latest demon screamed. There's no Jo and that makes so much more of a difference to him than he ever thought it would.

Risa comes along, she's always helped with the snatch-and-grab element of getting ahold of fresh meat for questioning, and she's good at that. Good at fighting, at keeping watch, at taking orders. Theo insists on coming too, and he's back at fighting weight and needs the experience, so Dean figures what the hell. Kid's bright and tough and quick, is halfway to a hunter already. But neither of them have the makings of a rackman. Not even close.

And so Dean goes to Cas.

By some Murphy's Law miracle, he finds Cas watching Ted's chickens alone and almost-sober, though he smells of absinthe as well as the familiar Dean-and-Cas shared musk. There's a lovebite under the hinge of his jaw that wasn't there ( _not jealous, he doesn't give a damn_ ) when Dean rolled out of bed at dawn.

Dean explains what he wants to do, curt. Well aware that if the son-of-a-bitch had ever bothered to participate in the hunt before now he wouldn't _have_ to explain. Wouldn't have to come crawling to him to beg for help like some fucking weak civilian.

Cas listens, quiet, his heavy-shadowed eyes steady on Dean's face. When Dean's done he says, "No."

"That's all you got? _No?_ " Doesn't even bother keeping the anger from his voice. "Are you – you better be fucking with me right now."

"I'm not _fucking with you_ , fearless leader." Cas shakes his head, leaning back against the rickety fence. "When you're going after Lucifer, then I'll help you. But this? _Torture_? Sorry, no. I can't stop you doing it, but I'm sure as hell not gonna join you."

His lips are curling up in something that could be a smile, but Dean can read disgust in every line of Cas's summer-tanned face. Like Cas is still Castiel, still an angel with a voice that shattered glass and a touch that burned souls and the right to look at Dean like slime on his shoe. And fuck that. Dean's not called on to take that shit.

Dean tells him, "Then I got nothing to say to you," and walks away.

* * *

The missions go well. Smooth.

They drive up into the Dakotas, sometimes stake places out, getting the lie of the land they've only seen on faded old atlases, sometimes take a demon. Once they work out a new system, it's easy – Theo's the bait, the distraction so Dean can jump the demon and get a bag marked with binding sigils over its head, and they bundle it into the truck and Risa drives off at manic speed, scorching rubber as she goes.

In a town three hours north of Chitaqua there's an empty police station with a Devils' Trap etched into the floor of the holding cells. It smells of stale blood and shit and sulphur. It takes Dean hardly any effort at all to think his way back to the Pit.

Risa and Theo sit outside playing cards as they keep watch. When Dean walks out of the cop shop they carefully don't look him in the eye. They dump the body ( _wrapped in rags so they can't see his handiwork_ ) in an old mass grave just out of town and carefully talk about the weather and Lana's cooking and Chuck's cough on the drive back.

Like he said, it's easy. Dean doesn't even have nightmares anymore.

The walls of the cabin fill up with more and more scrawled notes, the information Dean squeezes out of his demons filling in the cracks. When he looks at those mad serial-killer style spider webs ( _concept maps, Sam called them)_ of clues and confessions, he feels a familiar tug at the back of his brain that always came toward the end of a difficult case. The tug of intuition telling him he's on the right path, that the answer will come if he just keeps going.

So close. They are so close, and he's alive with the focus of the hunt. Restless with it. If it weren't for Risa putting her foot down, and the demands of his ( _heart)_ body that he still can't shake, he'd never call a halt to the recon and the interrogations, never go back to Chitaqua.

But of course he does go back.

He goes back and washes the blood and grime from his hands. Lets Rachael press her face into his knees and Jane force a bowl of stew on him and tell him he's a hero. Writes down every tidbit on yellowing notecards, tacks them up on the walls. Listens to Chuck babbling about the increasingly sad state of their stockpiles, nods along, _yeah, I'll go with y'all on a supply run tomorrow_ , refusing to let the exhaustion show.

He goes back and retreats to his cabin and Cas's little herd of groupies quickly learn to make tracks when he ducks in through the beaded curtain. Every time he comes back, Cas gets a little colder: all mocking, dead-eyed smirks on the one hand and silently judgemental stares on the other.

Dean wonders why the fuck he bothers anymore. Ain't no sex that can be good enough ( _and the sex is always pretty damn good)_ to put up with this. Not like there's no room left in the camp, he could just move out and put an end to it and be done with the whole goddamn thing. When Cas wakes him up in the cold dead of an October night, vomiting enthusiastically because tequila doesn't agree with Jaeger's hotpot, that option sure seems attractive.

But even still, after they come back from a supply raid that turned rough, and Dean's bad right shoulder is giving him hell, Cas is the one who sits him shirtless on the bed and kneads the tight-knotted muscles till they stop seizing up. And when Dean gets up at the grey break of dawn to a stunning light-show of a meteor shower, he doesn't even think before he's back in the cabin and shaking Cas awake.

They stand side by side, Cas barefoot in the dewy grass, head resting on Dean's shoulder, Dean rubbing at his mussed hair. Fighting the sudden urge to kiss him – not even fuck him, just kiss his chapped lips under the freaking shooting stars, like the hopeless romantics they have _never_ been. Like Dean hasn't been to Hell and blackened his hands in ways that'll never come clean, like Cas isn't a fallen angel losing himself to drugs and lust and liquor. Dean just – he just – _wants_. Still. So bad it hurts.

After the meteors stop streaking across the sky, Cas shuffles back off to bed, and Dean makes a bee line for the cabin with the radio. Sits down at the war table, leafing through notes that he can't take in. Willing himself to stop thinking of how blue Cas's eyes were, wide with wonder. How he'd stuck his hands up under Dean's jacket, his shirt, to keep them warm. The idle way he'd rubbed a thumb over the scratch his nails had left on the small of Dean's back last night.

It's fucking ridiculous. Dean's a grown-ass man, he knows better than to let himself get attached, get led around by the ( _heart_ ) dick like this.

He puts the notes down, closes his eyes, breathes deeply.

Come the fuck on. Man the fuck up. You know what Dad would say ( _weak, he's making you weak, can't afford that, the fuck's the point of a sissy hunter?)_ , and you know the old man's right ( _always right_ ). Just call the whole goddamn thing off like you should've in the first place. Yeah. Best for everyone.

Dean's quiet all day, ignoring Theo's chatter and Risa's musings. When they've both called it a night and he can barely keep his own eyes open, he flicks the lights out and leaves. Weaves his way back across the camp to his and Cas's place.

Their cabin is cold inside and smells of weed and sex. Cas is laid out on the bed, leaving Dean's side empty, as though waiting for him. His unshaven face is slack, not in the vacant way it gets when he's drugged-out, but soft. Serene. He's wearing an old plaid shirt that once belonged to Dean, back when there was still a distinction between Cas's clothes and Dean's.

The bed creaks as Dean climbs onto it, and Cas stirs, opens his eyes blearily. Grins slow when he sees Dean, reaching out to tug him down by the scruff of the neck, kiss him with bruising force. And Dean can't – he can't help but kiss back. Arch into Cas's touch as hands run down his spine, slides his own up over Cas's chest. Then their limbs are tangling as the clothes come off, and he straddles Cas's hips and loses himself in the touch of skin on skin, working himself down onto Cas until Dean can't tell where he ends and Cas begins.

He falls asleep wrapped up in a mess of blankets ( _too tired to clean up, gonna regret that in the morning_ ), with his face pressed between Cas's shoulderblades.

* * *

On the day of the winter's first snowfall, Dean's working on the cars, tuning up the engines while Risa and Jaeger fit the snow chains onto the tires. It's been too long since he's had a chance to get under the hood, and it has him in a good mood, whistling Led Zep, even though it's cold as a witch's tit.

He doesn't think much of it when he hears the gunshots. They're coming from the western side of the camp, and the Weiss girls headed over for shooting practice awhile back. Good kids, those. Emma's coming up on thirteen now and antsy for a gun that's _hers,_ to be allowed on supply missions.

Then he hears someone yelling his name, a high voice he almost recognises. Almost, but not quite. And that's – that's weird, because he knows every last person in Chitaqua –

Dean ducks out from under the hood of the car and turns to see Rachael running toward him, bundled up in a parka her sister outgrew, cheeks flaring pink.

"Dean!" she cries again, the first thing she's said in more than a year, the first time she's broken the silence she's kept since her mother died.

Behind him he hears Risa catch her breath, but he keeps an iron grip on his mask of calm. "What is it, honey?"

Rachael skids to a halt in the slushy mix of snow and mud. "There was – we were shooting. Shooting targets. And then a crow – Croat – tried to get us and he tried to get over the fence and Emma shot him but there's more and she said to get you, Dean." Her fluting childish voice is hoarse with lack of use, cracked and faded. She's breathing hard but not crying, not upset.

"Okay, good girl. Now go find Chuck and tell him that for me." She nods, eager as only children are, and darts off again. Dean purses his lips for a moment, thinking. "Alright. Jaeger, get Cas if he's not totally wasted, bring the rifles. Risa, with me." He doesn't wait for a reply, just takes off, drawing his pearl-handled Colt from the holster at his thigh as he goes.

Sure enough, when he reaches the westernmost edge of the camp, there's Emma Weiss, sawn-off shotgun in hand, aimed not at the target range but outwards. Toward the perimeter fence. There's a body lying at the bottom of the fence, still twitching, its blood smeared down over the dark wood and staining the fresh snow.

"Is that – that's a Croat on the inside," Risa says behind him, voice blank with shock. "Shit. _Shit_."

"Amen to that," Dean mutters. As he draws nearer he can hear the distinctive mad snarling of Croats from outside, hear frantic thudding and scraping noises as they try to force their way through or over the fence.

He'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. He'd hoped to hell it would never come to this.

Murphy's fuckin' Law.

He draws up level with Emma. "Where'd you hit it?"

"Like … bottom of the chest, maybe top of the belly. Twice." She doesn't so much as glance at Dean as she speaks. Keeps her sights trained firmly on the enemy and her finger resting lightly on the trigger.

It's just what Dean taught her, and he a heavy wave of satisfaction breaks over him. Emma Weiss might be four foot ten and weigh approximately nothing, but she's got it. _It_. The thing he has and ( _Sam_ ) Jo had and, competent as they are, Risa and Jaeger will never have, because you gotta get 'em young. Raise 'em in the life. You can learn to hunt when you're older, go through the motions, but that real killer instinct? That, you can only learn as a kid, and no two ways about it.

He taps her on the shoulder, raises his pistol and puts a slug in the Croat's head. It jerks once and is still. "Emma, fetch me gloves and the gasoline." The thought of giving the thing the kind of hunter's funeral his dad and Ellen had, that Bobby and Jo ( _just a Croat, she was just a Croat by the end_ ) should have had, it sticks in his craw. But they can't have the body there, infected blood festering inside the goddamn camp, and torching it is the safest way to be rid of it.

Emma makes this noise in the back of her throat, protesting being dismissed. Dean rolls his eyes. Like he has time for a fucking grumpy twelve-year-old girl. "You sure ain't going on no missions if you can't do as you're told, missy. Go on, get."

This time, she hops to it. No doubt she and Theo'll have a little bitching session about him later, but so long as they do their jobs, Dean could care less.

He turns to Risa. "I'm gonna get up on the roof of that cabin, see what I can see."

"I'll cover you," she says, quick and easy. Already has her own weapon out ( _police issue, a sweet piece but not as nice as his Colt)_ and ready.

Dean would still rather it was Jo or a sober Cas who had his back, but yeah. Yeah, Risa's good. Good enough for him to turn away from the fence and the threat of attack, holster his gun and clamber up onto the roof of what used to be Pete's cabin.

He sizes up the threat with a practiced eye. A small gang of Croats, all of them skinny as hell and so filthy it makes him itch just looking at the fuckers. There's maybe eight of the things, and not a decent weapon between them. He could take the whole lot out with just his pistol if he needed. The situation is really nowhere near as bad as he was anticipating.

But he knows, in some primitive place deep down in his gut, even after he's burned the body and ganked the others, it won't end there. It won't be that easy.

* * *

Dean's right.

That day is the first snow, the first time Croats have gotten right up to the edge of Chitaqua, and it sets the tone for the season that follows.

He'd thought the previous winter had been shitty, had hung on too long. And yeah, it had. But this? This winter is in a league of its own. It's bad. _Real_ bad. The kind of cold and the kind of snow that would have fucked things up even way back before the Apocalypse hit – deep and heavy and it just keeps on falling. Falling and falling and falling, on and on and on.

The very remoteness that kept them all safe for a year and a half is now threatening to kill them. After a few weeks of snowfall, drift hold the gates shut and they have to dig their way out of camp.

Even then, even once Dean's coaxed the cars into starting, even with heavy-duty chains on the tyres, the roads through the mountains are a fucking death trap. All unploughed snow, sometimes so deep it's impossible to see the path the road is taking, and trees felled by the storms blocking the way. There are more Croats around, too, roaming in packs, starving. Not even zombies are impervious to the bite of winter, it seems.

And as though the fuckers have some kind of hive-mind, after that first group finds their way to Chitaqua, it's like opening the floodgates. Doesn't take long for even the yuppies to get used to the screeching and snarling, the battering at the perimeter fence, their last defence. The shooting range stands empty – why practice on tin cans when there's a steady supply of the real thing? Sometimes, if there's a particularly massive group of the things, or the weather's clear, Dean breaks out his sniper rifle ( _been far too long since he used that old boy_ ) and sets up shop on a rooftop.

That's about as good as it gets, that winter: sitting atop a cabin, staring down the scope, lost in the calmness of it. The purity. Taking aim. Squeezing the trigger. Watching his shot go home to the back of the neck or between the eyes.

Times like that, it's as close as he comes to being happy.

* * *

It's like being trapped. In ( _Hell_ ) prison.

Snowed in, there's nowhere to go. Supply runs are so dangerous now, Dean passed down a decree of _absolute emergencies only_. There are still ancient cans of soup and dried-out, plasticky military rations, and Ted's chickens, and birds and rabbits in the woods. Desperate, but not desperate enough.

And so there they are: always hungry, always cold, locked in together.

Sitting and watching the pendulum all day, knowing that there's nothing more to be learned until the weather breaks and he can get out into the field again, it's driving Dean batshit. Can't stand it. That cabin has been his refuge and his hiding place, but if he stays there any longer he's gonna flip. Fucking cabin fever. Literally.

But it's too cold to sit outside and tinker with the cars, far too cold ( _so cold Dean's fingers ache with the memory of frostbite_ ). Dean learned that lesson hard. So there's nothing for it but to spend the days inside, sometimes in Risa's cabin, sometimes in Jaeger's, sometimes with Theo and the kids, but mostly? Mostly in his cabin. His and Cas's cabin.

Dean reads his way through most of Erin's little library of paperback books ( _sci-fi and fantasy mostly, lady's got taste_ ) that winter. He sits on the floor, turns pages with clumsy gloved hands. Listens to Cas going on about _extra-dimensional awareness_ and _quantum manifestations_ , his little disciples _um_ -ing and _aah_ -ing along. Sips at the throat-burning moonshine that gets passed around, takes the occasional toke on the joints.

Never enough for things to lose focus, just enough to warm his belly, enough that he can watch Cas and the girls as the clothes come off, and enjoy the show. Enough that when Cas palms his cheek he leans into the kiss, and when Lana laces her fingers through his and tugs, he follows.

It's not like Dean didn't spent a good decade and a half tomcatting his way through the lower forty-eight, but this? The press of bodies, so many limbs he can't keep track, the heat of ( _desperation_ ) lust rolling off them all until he feels he could suffocate with it – it's just – so much. Too much.

He loves it. A wet dream come true. Cas buried so deep inside him, clutching at his own handprint, gasping against Dean's neck, Lana's legs wrapped around his waist, head thrown back and clenching down on him.

And he hates it. Sobers up and wants to crawl out of his skin. Washes, curled over the bucket of water they keep by the space heater, until he can't bear the cold any longer. Looks at Cas, leaning languid against the headboard of the bed, eyes glazed over and dilated, finger-bruises smeared all over his creamy skin, grinning at Dean like he knows exactly what he's thinking, and wants to throw up.

If Dean could just ignore Cas, if Cas would just leave Dean alone, it would be better. But they've never been able to ignore each other. Castiel held all of Dean's attention from the moment he gripped him tight, and Cas still holds it now.

So there they are. Snowed in and half-starving, stuck with each other.

Like this, everything is magnified. Turned up to eleven. And they just can't ignore each other. Can't let anything go. When Cas gets wasted and turns into someone he's not, lying smooth and bare-faced to those strung-out women grasping at any shred of hope, Dean can't hold back the anger. And God knows Cas takes every chance he's got to mock him, smirking at his frustration, taking every chance to dig in the knife, batting back Dean's snapped retorts like they're sparring out back in Bobby's yard. Always, always calling him _fearless leader_ , lips twisting and eyes glinting cold.

It's exhausting. Snarling at each other, Cas laughing and laughing like the Apocalypse is a goddamn joke to him, Dean's fists white-knuckled at his sides. The fights are never as loud or brutal as the old Sam-Winchester-versus-John-Winchester screaming matches were, but they hurt just as much. Then, when they crescendo up and Cas finally stops giggling and goes white-faced with anger, the switch gets flipped and someone grabs a shirt and someone gives a shove and they're on the bed. Fucking like it's a war, all teeth and nails, staining the sheets with blood and come and tears.

Round and round. Solving nothing. Two gears that once moved in perfect synchrony, thrown out of alignment and grinding futilely against one another.

 Dean doesn't know why he expected anything different. After all, they kissed for the first time after massacring an entire village of Croats, fucked for the first time in Bobby's scrapyard, high as hell on Jo's weed.

It was always going to end up like this.

* * *

Thanksgiving passes by unmarked, then Christmas, then New Year. If it weren't for Jaeger crossing the days off on the year planner on the wall of the largest communal cabin, Dean could almost believe time was standing still. Trapped in ice.

New Year's Day is still and clear. Dean climbs up to perch on the roof of his and Cas's cabin. He smokes the last of the cigarettes he took from Jo's car after Kansas City, and lets himself think of her, remember her. The bright flash of her hard smile. Stealing a fire engine to rescue Dean from ( _Sam)_ Meg in Detroit. Standing to his left, gun in hand, the wingman he relied on like an extra limb. Guiding her knife in New Orleans. How she dug him out of the warm blanket of snow and slapped his face and saved his life.

Her dead body at his feet.

Nothing's been right since that moment. Risa's eyes hollow, Theo consumed by the obsession of the hunt, Dean's knees slowly buckling under all that weight, he and Cas tailspinning out of control without her to counterbalance them out.

Dean swallows hard, bites his lip and tips his head back to stare up at the blank pale sky. This is why he doesn't dare think of her, doesn't dare touch that wound.

He misses her more than he does his brother.

"Fuck you, Harvelle," he says, lips scratching against his rough scarf, words spilling out unasked. "Fuck you. Why'd you – you left me alone with this, you goddamn bitch. Left me alone with Cas. I can't – I can't do this, not on my own – god _damn_ it, Jo!"

Not crying. He's not crying.

When he finishes the cigarette, he slides his way back down to the ground. Tosses the butt away into the grey sludge. Rotates his right shoulder and heads off to find Theo. Time for an update on what the pendulum's been showing.

* * *

In February, the weather takes a turn for the even worse. Because _of course_ it can still get worse. Can always get worse.

It's so cold now it hurts to breathe outside, even with scarves and hats covering your face. The water pipes freeze and they're down to melting snow for water, slaughtering the last of the chickens and boiling the bones. One night the generator fails and Dean wakes up to frost on the inside of the cabin windows.

He hates the cold. Fucking _hates_ it. It's nothing but memories. Eleven and not daring to turn the heating on in their shitty apartment because the money was running out, twenty-one and digging up graves in Maine on his birthday, twenty-four and Christmas alone because Sam had fucked off to Stanford and Dad had vanished on a drinking binge, twenty-eight and sleeping huddled for warmth in the backseat with his brother when the FBI was on their asses and they didn't dare use the credit cards, thirty-three and walking out into a blizzard to say _yes_.

He can't sleep for it. He's gotten used to the aches of his bad shoulder and the old breaks in his ribs, but this deeper cold sets his fingers throbbing and burning where the frostbite sank its teeth into him. Not like he's a stranger to pain, but there's something about the constant needling of it, and the creeping hunger, that just fucks with him.

Eventually, after one too many nights of Dean tossing and turning irritably, Cas gives in.

"Oh for fuck's sake." He rolls over, grabs Dean by the shoulder and hip and drags him in close. They're pressed together, face-to-face, Cas's leg slung over Dean's, one arm looped tight around his shoulders. Cas takes Dean's smarting, icy hands, pushes them up under his own shirt, holds them in the warmth of his underarms. "That better?"

"Yeah, I – yeah." Their foreheads are touching, stray strands of Cas's crazy hair tickling Dean. Breathing the same air.

Cas snorts. "Good. Now go to sleep, fearless leader."

And, for a goddamned miracle, he does.

From then on, that's how they sleep: wrapped up in blankets and so close Dean can feel every twitch of Cas's legs, every long slow breath, every heartbeat. It's not even sexual. It would be easier if it were – their sex hasn't felt this _intimate_ in months, if it ever did. Besides, sex is something Dean's always understood, known how to deal with and react to, which is more than can be said for _this_.

This, he has no clue.

So he just lies there, quiet and still, insides scraped raw over the sharp edges of how much he loves Cas and how much he hates him, how he feels safe and trapped all at once in this embrace, how the only time Cas actually says Dean's name these days is when he comes.

* * *

Dean could almost cry when the snow starts to thaw.

The first time he drives out, the truck ( _Jo's truck_ ) humming beneath his hands, the roads finally clear, he can't stop grinning. Even the picked-clean bones at the roadsides can't dent the joy of being able to fucking _drive_ again. And maybe finally get his hands on some food that doesn't come dried in an Army-issue pack.

With travelling possible again, the mission of hunting down Bela kicks back into high gear. All through that godawful winter, Theo's been keeping track of the pendulum, watching it until the crazy erratic swinging resolves into patterns. Between that and the intel Dean got out of captured demons before Chitaqua got snowed in, they've narrowed down a few locations. A few places that are possibles for Bela's safe-house. Now it's just a process of elimination.

Fuck, it's good to be back in business.

The eight hour drive up to the border region of North Dakota, mask tied loosely over his nose and mouth, arm stretched lazily over the back of the shotgun seat ( _so damn empty without Cas_ ), watching the budding trees and skeletal gas stations roll away behind him, it feels like freedom. All the broken pieces and shards of glass that were lodged inside him all winter-long blunted and crushed to sand beneath his wheels.

When he and Theo snatch the first demon of the spring, and Risa cuts the binding mark into its arm, and he feels his knife come alive in his palm, he remembers how to not care.

It's not all fun, though. Not all painting a picture in colours ( _the thousand colours Alastair showed him_ ) that can't be seen. Can't have everything.

They spend a lot of time on stake-out, him and Risa. Theo doesn't have the patience for it, for spending hours at a time laid out on your belly, binoculars in hand, quiet as the grave, watching and waiting for something that might not show anyway. After all, he's eighteen, and it took John Winchester years and effort Dean can't spare, to instil that discipline in his own sons. Dean was kinda expecting Risa wouldn't be able to handle it, either, but she's alright. Jumpy, always slightly freaked about being in the middle of a hot zone, but alright. Turns out cops are good for something, who knew?

So Theo stays back at Chitaqua while Dean and Risa spend day after too-long day watching the erratic comings-and-goings at half a dozen warehouses and mansions and railway stations. What gets brought in, what gets taken out – weapons and Hellhounds and bones and ancient books and half-starved humans handcuffed together and demons in warded chains and once a case of champagne. Trying to make sense of it all.

It's the most prolonged hunt Dean has ever been on. The one he thinks now that he was training for all his life. All those bullshit jobs he worked with Dad ( _and Sam_ ) and Cas, they were all just warm up for this. _The_ job.

When he lies still as a corpse in the undergrowth, cold spring rain slicking his shirt to his back, the pain of relentless staring throbbing behind his eyes, it's like he ceases to be himself. He's not _Dean_ anymore, not a person. Nothing but the weapon his father and Castiel always knew he was, created for this. This one purpose.

He's alive with it, his blood burning with it, when he buries his knife hilt-deep in stolen demon-flesh, reaches for the salt and the holy water, smiling as the screaming climbs precipitously up to a crescendo. Alight with purpose.

It feels like justice, like vindication. Like absolution.

* * *

This year the turn of spring into summer is a slow creep, inch by inch, as though the seasons are mirroring the hunt.

Dean crosses off the railway station and the old factory from the list. Then the warehouses. Then the high school with angel-proofing carved into the walls. Then it's just the houses left – the two mini mansions that were noted down as possible retreats almost as afterthoughts. He really should have known. Bela always did have a taste for luxury, and people don't change ( _at all_ ) much when they become demons.

It's down to the two houses and after so much good goddamn detective work to get this far, Dean figures it's time to cut loose. Change up.

This time, the demon he takes is a white-eyed motherfucker. He's seen it sniffing around before, all dressed up in fucking Armani, flitting here and there and everywhere, sticking out among the crossroads bitches like a fox in a henhouse. And say what you will about 'em, but white-eyed demons have got their pride. No way is this thing getting out of bed for anyone less than the queen of the crossroads herself.

Also, Dean's getting bored with playing with nothing but the little red-eyed cockroaches, so sue him. It's been a long time since he's been up against an actual challenge ( _need the struggle to make the art great, Alastair always said_ ). So yeah. The white-eyed bastard it is.

The snatch-and-grab goes like a dream. By now he and Theo and Risa are a well-oiled machine. Fucker never stands a chance.

It _is_ a challenge. Takes Dean all of the day and most of the night. But in the end he does it, has the thing shaking and sightless, spitting out black bile and shattered teeth over the steel-capped toes of his boots. Telling him everything. Singing like a goddamn canary.

When the body's been dumped into the open mouth of the pit Theo and Risa dug, earth scattered over it, Dean tips his head back to the white morning sky and smiles.

He tells the others what the demon told him ( _the queen's bolthole is the house just off Route 83)_ , and then climbs into the backseat of Risa's car. Sleeps sound and dreamless, lulled by the ever-familiar murmur of an engine and miles of blacktop spooling out before them.

Dean sleeps all the way back to Chitaqua. He wakes bleary-eyed and with a crick in his neck ( _backseat ain't long enough, the car doesn't know him like his baby did_ ), all the muscles in his arms and shoulders aching pleasantly with use. Both Risa and Theo are wiped out from the drive, stagger off to get food and a drink, but Dean doesn't go with them. There's too much running through his mind, all this giddy vicious energy, because he did it, he went and fucking _did_ it, he knows where to find Bela and now it's just a matter of time before the Colt is in his hand again and ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam is dead. He's going to win.

He's going to win and he feels so fucking _alive_. Wants to laugh and cry and drink and fuck for the joy of it. If he doesn't share it with ( _Cas_ ) someone, he's going to go mad with it.

It's late afternoon, muggy and humid, mosquito season, Dean's least favourite kind of weather. Still, he's whistling Led Zep all the way over to the cabin he shares with Cas, grinning as he goes.

Inside, it's cooler, a little less stuffy. The place is quiet, just Cas sprawled out on the bed with an arm crooked over his face to shield his eyes. There's a mostly-empty bottle of what looks like vodka standing open on the table by Cas's side of the bed, and a mostly-full pack of Vicodin, and for once the sight doesn't infuriate Dean. Hell, he might dig out the Jack Daniels and get with the program himself. If there was ever an occasion for drunk sex …

Cas stirs as Dean walks over to him, perches on the edge of the bed and puts a hand on his shoulder, shakes gently. "Hey, c'mon man, wake up. We gotta celebrate."

"Huh – the fuck?" Cas sits up, rubbing at red-rimmed eyes. "Wha – what's going on?"

Dean grins, pats his stubbly cheek. "Found out where Bela lives. I got this shit wrapped up, man, Bela, the Colt, we're gonna _win_." On impulse he leans forward to kiss Cas's forehead, musses his already-ridiculous bedhair. "But first, gonna celebrate, yeah?" He ducks his head, leans in to press his lips to Cas's, the same way he has a thousand times before –

And Cas shoves him away. Hard.

"What the _hell_ , Cas?"

"Your hands." Cas is pale with sudden fury, eyes slitted to a dangerous squint. "Don't – don't touch me. Your _hands_."

" _What_?" Dean glances down, and oh, yeah. Forgot to go wash 'em off at the tap. They're kind of a mess, but it ain't like Cas is some squeamish little twelve-year-old girl who faints at the sight of blood. "Christ, Cas, it's just a little blood. The hell d'you think I _do_ on these jobs, sit around making daisy chains? C'mon."

Cas's mouth twists. "That is the blood of a person –"

"A demon," Dean snaps, because, really? Come the fuck _on_. Even for Cas, this is some bullshit.

"Yeah, a demon possessing a person." He's shouting now, his words slurring slightly as he gets to his feet. "A _person_ , does that even mean anything to you, fearless leader?"

It's the mocking, needling nickname as much as anything that sends Dean shooting to his feet, fists clenched. He yells right back at Cas, temper burning white-hot the way it always does after a wet job. "You fucking hypocrite. You think cuz you ain't an angel anymore I forgot that poor son-of-a-bitch you possessed and got killed? Huh? You think I forgot Jimmy Novak?"

In a single wild motion like the breaking of a wave, Cas grabs the bottle of vodka and hurls it to the side. Dean jumps, arm flying up instinctively to protect his face as the glass shatters against the wall. " _Just shut up!_ " Cas's voice is shaking, raw, his breathing coming harsh and rapid. "You don't – I'm – I'm so sick of this. Sick of the killing, sick of the things you –"

Dean barks a laugh, cuts over him. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, cry me a river." He wants to slap Cas, shake him, make him stop with his ridiculous hysterics, the whining about how _bad_ he feels about the filth Dean's had to cover himself with while Cas sits at home high as a fucking kite. "You wanna make s'mores while the world burns, I get it, whatever. But I'm trying to _do_ something here, I know you don't give a damn, but –"

"You don't know a fucking thing about me." Cas's hysteria is fading now to something colder, calmer. He's glaring at Dean with an intensity he never has before, not even when he was threatening to throw him back in the Pit. Like if he could, he'd burn Dean to ash with a touch of his hand. " _I rebelled to save humanity_. And all I've done – all I've done – is watch them die and kill them myself and watch you turn yourself into _this_."

He spits it out, lips curling like they can't even bear to touch the word, blue eyes gleaming grace-fierce, like Dean is the most disgusting thing he's ever seen. Like it wasn't Castiel who looked at the man John Winchester had made and saw a weapon the angels could use. Like it wasn't Castiel who picked up the pieces of him and stitched them together all wrong. Like it wasn't Castiel who put the razor back in his hands and pointed him at Alastair and said, _Go._

"Don't you judge me, Cas, don't you dare." Dean has to step away, turn his back. Can't look at that smug, foul ( _beloved)_ face and not want to make it bleed. "I'm trying to fix what you and your family did to this world."

Cas snorts, laughs his rotting laugh. "What happened to 'Lucifer and Sam are on _us_ '? Huh?"

He spins back around. Can't help it. Stalks closer. Words spilling out like venom, like vomit he can't control. Everything he's thought, all these nights watching Cas erase himself with drugs and women and booze. "You think you're so goddamn superior, so much better than me? At least I ain't some pathetic junkie fallen angel that'll fuck anyone dumb enough to believe your bullshit."

The grin on Cas's face is wide and cracked and awful. A twisted parody of the first human smile that broke innocent across his face four years before. Dean still remembers that moment so clearly, sees it superimposed over the here and now. Sees the man in the trenchcoat leaning back against the shining black car, smiling, the vast Iowa horizon, feels the devastating rush of love all over again, and it makes the caustic burn of loathing in his belly even worse.

"No," Cas says, brightly, "you're just a master torturer, Alastair's star pupil." His voice turns bitter, sarcastic, but he keeps right on smiling. "Forgive me for not seeing the moral high road there."

Dean's vision washes over with red. With the thousand colours Alastair opened his eyes to, that he tried to forget, that Castiel forced him to remember. " _YOU_ made me into this."

Cas spreads his arms wide, eager. Furious and delighted and disgusted all at once. "You made your own fucking choices, always have done: free will, baby! And just look where that's gotten us – I'm _human_ , and you? You're worse than you were in Hell."

The words hit something in Dean – some fault-line scoring through the heart of him – echoing and rebounding on and on and on. Beneath his feet the world turns, slipsliding and shifting, treacherous ( _the way it used to when Dad called him out, smacked him one, told him,_ boy, I don't know where I went wrong with you), and not a decision but some deep-down instinct when he takes a half step forward and hits Cas in the face with his best right hook.

It's a good punch. A damn good punch. Jars Dean's knuckles. Sends Cas staggering, collapsing down onto the bed.

For a long moment, Dean just stares. Rooted to the spot. Caught out of time. Blood rushing in his ears. Acid in his throat.

A long moment of silence, and then Cas throws back his head and laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs, a hideous, dead sound that goes on and on and follows Dean even when he ( _runs_ ) stalks out of the cabin, slamming the door so hard it drives splinters into his palm.

* * *

It's almost dark when Cas comes to him.

Dean's sitting on the hollow hood of the Impala, hands clasped around his ankles. He's ravenously hungry, the way he never lets himself get if he can help it ( _hunger tastes of poverty, of grief, of abandonment)_. He wants a shot of espresso, hot and bitter, one of Jo's cigarettes, a Valium from his post-Hell stash. Above all he wants ( _Cas)_ a drink, JD or Cuervo or just fucking rotgut moonshine, he's not feeling awful particular. Wants to drink until he drops in true Winchester style.

But it's the twilight of the Apocalypse and if he ever got what he wants, he doesn't now.

With the warmer weather, the camp's evening gatherings for food and drink around the fire have started again. Erin's rabbit stew smells like goddamn manna from heaven. He's so hungry, so fucking hungry, but he can't stand the thought of eating. It's been hours but he feels sick to his stomach still. Sick on Cas. Sick on himself. Sick on the entire world and trying to stop it limping to its grave.

Lost in his thoughts, he doesn't notice Cas walking down the hill toward him until he's close enough for Dean to see the glassy cast to his blue eyes. The blurred edges of his movements. The bruise blooming violet at the corner of his mouth.

Cas walks over, leans back against the hood of the car next to Dean, one bare foot rubbing at his ankle. He doesn't look at Dean, just stares out at the camp, his finely-drawn profile outlined by golden sunlight.

Dean's gaze is held in place, fixed on that one spot. The mark his fist left on Cas's mouth and cheek.

All his life Dean has wanted to be his father. Still does. And he's okay with that, he is, with knowing that John Winchester was a better man than his son could ever be, that he was so right about so many things, that Dean will in a thousand ways never live up to that example. But there's this. This one way he never _wanted_ to live up to Dad's example, and he _has_. He fucking has.

Dean's gotta send Cas away. That's all there is to it. Gotta tell him, _this is enough, we're done, we're over, I'll find somewhere else to sleep._

Cas licks his lips and says, "Dean."

His breath catches in his throat. The words turn to ash.

Cas turns to look at Dean. His face is at once the same as it's always been and different, a stranger Dean has never seen before and yet recognises at once. A mask has been lifted, a spell broken, and all the ugliness on the undersides of both of them are finally bared to the light of day. All the resentments nursed for five years in secret dragged out into the open. They opened the box and the cat is dead and there's no going back now.

And still he grips the collar of Dean's shirt and pulls him in and kisses him, and then Dean is kissing back and he knows nothing is gonna break whatever bond it is that holds them together. Nothing.

* * *

The fight ( _they've fought before and they fight after but to Dean it's still The Fight)_ changes everything and nothing.

Cas still sits on his ass getting wasted all day. Still tells lie after lie to a bevy of clueless girls. Dean still spends every minute he can away on missions or sitting at the war table with Theo or Risa. They barely see one another. And yet they're still sleeping together, still sharing the same bed, still fucking, like no matter how they try they can't escape, locked in orbit round and around each other.

Perpetual motion.

* * *

They know where the safehouse is. They know how to get to it. They know – they think – all of the entrances and exits, though Dean wouldn't put it past Bela to have a secret passage out or some shit like that.

There's just one final piece of the puzzle: when Bela will be there.

Dean's heard the same thing from every demon he's taken his knife to in the last two years. The queen of the crossroads is always on the move. Here and there and everywhere. She might stay in one of her safehouses for days or weeks at a time, only to vanish off on Lucifer's business, not to return for months.

It's a waiting game now. Days upon days of stake-out. Constantly refining the spells on the pendulum. Noting down dates and times and licence plates when demons come and go from the house. The activity of the place is erratic at best, insane at worst. Hell never was much for order.

Days bleed into weeks.

As it gets hotter and hotter, Theo's temper ( _at being left behind, at being taken on stake-out, at everyone and everything_ ) gets shorter and shorter. Dean doesn't have the patience for adolescent rage and ignores it. Keeps setting him homework, reading on exorcisms and ward-breaking and trapping sigils. Can't leave anything to chance when you go up against the queen of the crossroads and the kid needs to pull his weight.

Meanwhile Risa's getting nervier and nervier. She's damn good in a crisis, but between the endless grind of surveillance and being constantly deep in the hot zones, she's jumpy as hell. In a way, Dean sympathises. The last part of a hunt is always the worst. The anticipation, the certainty that he would fuck up after everything they've done, it used to drive him up the wall as a kid.

So yeah, he understands, like he understands Theo chafing at the leash around all their necks. Doesn’t mean he indulges it. They're soldiers, all of them, like it or not.

And so it goes. Waiting and watching. Day in and day out.

It's almost a relief, spending days at a time away from ( _Cas_ ) Chitaqua. Away from ( _Cas_ ) everyone else, Rachael Weiss forever trailing after him, Chuck and the yuppies coming to him for every damn thing, like none of them can make the slightest decision without him. Out from the prison of the perimeter fence. The closest he's got to that old open-road freedom since he put his baby up on bricks.

Sometimes it feels like out here in the hot zone, lying belly-to-the-ground with Risa taut as a strung wire beside him, is the only time Dean can breathe.

* * *

On an August day so hot it's hard to see the house for the heat hazes rising off the cracked road, the inevitable happens. A bunch of demons stumbles on Dean and Risa's little hideaway.

It's more by luck than judgement – the demons are your common-or-garden hellspawn, with black eyes and about three brain cells to call their own. Small fry. But there's seven of the fuckers and Dean is perhaps a little out of practice at taking a knife to something that's in a position to fight back, and so it's a closer run thing than it ought to be.

By the time Dean stabs the sixth in the heart, he's dripping sweat, the salt of it stinging when it runs into the slice the third scored along the small of his back. His right shoulder is throbbing dully. The meatsuit collapses to the floor, dead. He turns around to see the seventh demon with its fingers wrapped in the collar of Risa's t-shirt, pinning her up against a tree.

Its face is pushed up close to hers, and it's purring at her the way demons do when they think they have you by the balls. She's wide-eyed and gasping, playing helpless victim to perfection. "I'mma take you downstairs to see your girlfriend, you'll like that, won't you? Li'l Joanna Beth, she'll have you belly-up on her rack –"

Dean steps up behind it and slices its throat in a single smooth motion. The demon dies in mid-sentence, dropping like a stone. Risa leans her head back against the trunk of the tree, breathing in ragged pants, her hands shaking as they come up to push through her greasy hair, wipe at her eyes.

It hits Dean suddenly that she hadn't been faking. Hadn't just been acting as bait.

Well. Either way. It worked.

"Come on, we need to move these bodies," he tells her, brisk. "Don't want Bela knowing we ganked a load of her toyboys on her doorstep."

Risa presses the heels of her hands into her eyesockets for a moment, then pushes away from the tree, jaw set. It takes ten minutes to heft the bodies into the bed of the truck, forty-five minutes to drive out to a convenient body-dumping spot off the highway. Dean rings the corpses with salt and holy water and by this point there's blood sticking his shirt to his back and seeping down his jeans and he's starting to feel kinda woozy.

He sits cross-legged in the shotgun seat, holding a flask of water to his forehead as he talks Risa through stitching him up. Although her hands are trembling, she doesn't do bad ( _doesn't make half the mistakes Cas did the first time, sewing up his thigh all those years ago)_.

When she's done, she presses the flat of her palm between his shoulder-blades, and says, "How do you always – how can you always _deal_ with this shit? I feel – I feel like I'm gonna lose my mind, all the time, and you're just – always –"

Her voice is cracking, raw, bleeding at the edges. Dean thinks she might be crying and is fervently grateful he can't see her face. How does he cope with all this? Same way he's coped with everything all his goddamn life. "Well, someone's got to, sweetheart."

Risa gives this half-laugh, half-sob, and her head falls forward, rests against his shoulder. Her hair tickles the nape of his neck. "She used to say. She used to tell me to always do what you said. To trust you. That you were gonna save us all. She used to tell me that all the time."

Dean's mouth is so dry it hurts. He doesn't have to ask who _she_ is. _She_ is right there with them, the memory of her thick in the air, both of them missing her so much that she's as inescapable as the beat of the August sun. "Yeah," he says at last. "She knew what she was about, Jo did."

"Guess she did," Risa breathes. Her other arm curls around Dean's waist. He wraps his fingers around her wrist.

They sit like that for what feels like a long time. Then Risa lets go of him and goes around to the driver's side and starts the car, turns it toward Chitaqua.

* * *

In the end, it's easy.

Mid-August, Dean gets sick of being stealthy and decides, what the hell. They may as well just nab a demon and ask it when Bela's going to show. His dad would tell him to _think, for once in your life boy, think_ , and ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam would get that bitchface, and Jo would say _Winchester, I can't believe this shit actually crosses your mind,_ and Cas would roll his eyes and say _you're being reckless again_ , but they're none of them here. It's just him and Risa and no one to tell him to stop. God knows she won't, Jo made sure of that.

So he trusts to his instincts, and they say fuck subtlety, get the sledgehammer.

They stop watching the house and start watching the road. The first car that comes their way is a black sedan with sigils cut into the paint job. Dean shoots out its tyres, one-two, like it's target practice, and then draws his demon knife, Risa at his side with Zachariah's sword.

When he yanks the car door open, the demon is cowering, whimpering. "Mercy, mercy, don't – please don't –"

Dean's always wanted to have a reputation that precedes him. He grins and twirls his knife, reaches for the demon.

"Stopstopstop I'll tell you everything you want to know! Please!"

He has it by the throat. It's wearing a teenage girl, small enough that his hand wraps right around her neck, stolen pulse tripping against his palm. "Well. Since you asked so nicely. You can tell me when Bela's gonna be in town."

The demon swallows twice, its eyes fixed on the serrated edge of the knife. "She's – the queen is coming in, in two days. She'll be here in two days."

"Uh-huh, and what's she bringing with her? How much muscle?" Dean taps it on the nose with the flat of the blade. "And don't you lie to me."

"No no no, I won't, I won't –" It closes its eyes, takes a breath. "No muscle. She's coming alone. Told everyone to leave when she gets here. And – and – she's said she's bringing the gun." Behind Dean, Risa can't quite swallow her gasp, and the demon's eyes flick between her and Dean and back again. "What does that – what does that _mean_ , I don't –"

Dean cuts its throat, quick and clean. Straightens up and stares at Risa. His mind has gone very, very quiet. All he can hear is the faint buzzing of mosquitoes and the thud of his heartbeat.

"It's a trap," Risa says. She sounds calm, blank, same way he feels.

He shrugs, sheathes his knife, wincing as the motion tugs at the healing wound on his back. "Some traps you just gotta spring," he tells her, a John Winchester axiom. "Let's make a move."

All the way back to Chitaqua, Dean is still and silent inside. The joy and triumph he knows he must feel locked away on the other side of a wall he can't quite touch. He doesn't understand why everything isn't different. Why the world doesn't look and smell fundamentally different, the way it did after Sam said _yes_ , a sea change that touched every inch of him.

Then again, disaster and death and victory are always somehow mundane. Banal. Things happen and nothing is ever the same but you still have to keep on getting up in the morning and driving the car and sharpening the knives and cleaning the guns and washing your hair under the single tap in camp. Life is stubborn like that.

It's dark when they make it back. There are fireflies buzzing in the air, and Dean can hear the muffled hum of voices, can smell the woodsmoke from the campfire. He gets out of the truck and stands there, in the warm night, one hand resting on the metal of the hood, listening to the oblivious chatter of the people he has spent his life trying to protect, who he is going to kill his brother to protect, and all he thinks is _yes_.

Risa walks up beside him and touches his shoulder, leans against him. "We did it," she says, breathless, and all of a sudden it's real.

"We fucking did it," he repeats, and turns and grabs her arms, grinning wildly. Her dark eyes gleam back at him in the gloom, wolfish, and he feels alive the way he only does at the climax of a hunt when the kill is so close and his blood is singing with it. " _Fuck_ yes, we did."

She laughs, giddy, and then she reaches up, grips his face between both of her hands, pulls him down and kisses him, hard and fast. He pushes back against her, half-growls into it, tangles a hand in her hair. There's a thousand and one reasons why they shouldn't be doing this and he doesn't give a damn about any of them, because he's _done_ it, he's going to _win_ , and he's riding high and if he never comes back down that's fine by him.

They kiss against the truck, feverish, like ( _he and Cas used to_ ) teenagers. Normally with women Dean at least tries for gentlemanly, but that's gone to the winds with all his better judgement. He pulls her hair and grabs her ass, and she gives as good as she gets, biting his lip and rubbing herself up on his jean-clad thigh. Then she goes for the buckle of his belt and for a very brief second he considers rolling with it but he's still got his dignity, damn it, and exhibitionism's never exactly been his kink.

It's a short stumble to Risa's cabin and then everything falls to pieces. The clothes go, he doesn't know how, and then there they are, up against the wall, fucking hard and fast. Ragged nails score down Dean's shoulders, his sides, while he grips her waist hard enough to bruise, the both of them slick with sweat and dazed with the unfamiliar taste of triumph. When Risa comes, she sinks her teeth into the curve at the base of his neck, and he slams his hips against hers with the last of his strength, head falling back on a silent scream.

They don't say anything afterward, just lie still on top of unwashed sheets, her head on his chest, his hand on her arm. Jo's ghost is caught between them, but no matter how close they get, they still can't touch her.

* * *

The next day is stiflingly hot, and the only thing that keeps Dean sane is pulling rank to skip the queue for the water tap. He runs it over his head, down his ( _marked-up_ ) neck, fills his flask and drinks till he feels slightly sick. Then he goes to find Cas.

In true Cas style, he's sitting on the floor of their cabin, Erin and Lana and this mousy chick Dean thinks is maybe called Megan all gathered round, hanging on his every word about _energy states_ and _inner perception_. He looks up when Dean ducks through the fly curtain. For a moment his eyes narrow, flicking over the bruise on Dean's throat, the scratches on his arms, lips thinning with what might be disapproval ( _hah, what's good for the goose is good for the gander_ ). Then he breaks out into a broad grin, and gives Dean a truly magnificent dive-bar leer.

"Good night, huh, fearless leader?"

Dean ignores the jibe, ignores the girls' knowing smiles, says curtly, "Tomorrow night I'm going to get the Colt. You in?"

Cas's smile looks fixed, pasted on. "Ladies, why don't you excuse us for a moment …"

"Are you in?" Dean snaps. Damned if he's letting Cas use his little groupies to duck out of this conversation.

Arms folded, Cas says, "So you know where Bela is. How're you gonna get her to give up the Colt? Hm?"

He shrugs, spreads his hands. "Any means necessary." When Cas's mouth twists and he looks away, Dean snorts. Cas never ceases to amaze. "Come the fuck on, dude. You know what I'm doing here, don't give me this innocent shit. Now are you in or are you out?"

Cas rubs at his eyes, glances surreptitiously at the women, who are watching the conversation avidly, like it's a goddamn tennis match. When he speaks he sounds old, exhausted, and Dean thinks it's the most genuine he's heard Cas sound in what seems like a lifetime. "Like I said. I'll come with you to end this. To kill Lucifer. The rest … no."

Dean shrugs. He doesn't feel anything. Not relief, not anger, not love, not hate. "Fine."

Risa doesn't show at the campfire that evening. Maybe getting cold feet about screwing her dead girlfriend's sort-of-adopted brother. Dean's kind of relieved – the day after is always awkward as fuck ( _except when it was with Cas_ ), and he's really not in the mood for that shit. Not in the mood for any shit, in all honesty.

He feels like he did when he was a kid and stuck in eighth period geography class, watching the clock tick away the time, second by maddening second, until he could run back to ( _Sammy_ ) his Dad and his records and shooting practice. Everything in him is focused on this one thing, his entire world tunnel-visioned into the countdown until he lays his hands on that gorgeous, blessed gun again.

While he's eating, mechanically, Cas appears at his side, barefoot and joint in hand. He doesn't offer it to Dean. Just says, "Gonna have a bit of a party tonight. In the cabin."

It's an invitation and a challenge and a _fuck you_ all in one. But in twenty-four hours Dean is going to kill Bela and take back Samuel Colt's magic gun, and he can't find it in himself to care about anything else. He looks up at Cas, doesn't even have to school his features into blankness, says calmly, "Yeah, you do what you want. Wasn't gonna stay there tonight anyway."

Cas's mouth twists, and he gives a sarcastic salute before fading back away into the darkness.

When Jane comes over, sits down on the bench beside him, their knees touching, looks up at him with fervent hero worship in her eyes, he smiles back. Puts his hand on her tanned leg. Nods when she says breathily, _my place?_ What the hell. He's just marking time anyway.

* * *

The next day is a dragging blur of impatience. Dean tells Jaeger and Ted what's up, spends most of the day going over and over the plan with Theo till they've covered every loose end, every possibility. He feels wired, like he threw back half a dozen amphetamines and washed them down with a couple espressos, but it's nothing more than the thrill of plans five years in the making about to come to fruition.

By the time it starts to get dark, he can barely breathe. Makes a circuit of the perimeter fence in double-time, supposedly checking all the wards, mostly an attempt at working the ( _nervous_ ) excess energy out of his system.

It doesn't work. He's still fizzing with it, itching beneath his skin. Gotta get it out. Can't go into such a big hunt like this, it's a disaster waiting to happen. But he doesn't have anything to ( _flay_ ) beat, to kill, doesn't have any way of working it out through violence, or even sex, and alcohol is right out, which pretty much covers the old standbys.

But there is the Impala. His lifelong anchor.

He doesn't make a habit of visiting her – that New Year's Eve taught him a hard lesson, and besides, she belongs to his past and not his present. But right now? Time for an exception.

As he follows the fence back around, he catches sight of a figure in the shadows. A figure that sure as hell doesn't look like anyone in camp. A figure moving in a way that to his practiced eye reads as surreptitious, tense but not fearful, confident in its own strength.

All the diffuse aggression in Dean resolves down to cold intent. Stalk and incapacitate.

It's almost too easy to come up behind the figure, cat-footed, trusty M1911 loaded and ready. He has his finger on the trigger, but there's something _familiar_ about the intruder, something nagging at the back of his brain, and instead of shooting he pistol-whips the bastard round the back of the head.

The figure hits the ground with a thud. Dean toes it over onto its back and finds himself staring down at his own face.


	13. Arrow Of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is something new. Something different. The strangest thing that's happened to him in years. Possibly ever. Definitely since Croatoan overtook obsessive ghosts and faded Old Gods and crazy fucking witches and became the only game in town. The last three years have been on the whole grindingly awful, extravagantly bizarre at least makes an interesting change of pace.

_'We're one and the same, just the remains of an age.'_

* * *

Dean's slim silver pocketknife is in his hand as he's still wondering how in the hell a shapeshifter got past all his wardings. It's been at least two years since he tangled with anything other than demons or Croats, and kneeling to draw the blade across the intruder's forearm feels like a return to childhood. To simpler times.

But there's no steam, no blackening of the flesh at the touch of silver. No reaction, either, to Dean flicking droplets of holy water across its face or scattering salt over its prone form. He reaches under his jacket, for the pouch he sewed into the lining when he first bought it, pulls out the dried vervain, rubs it against pale skin. Nothing.

"Huh." Dean rocks back on his heels, presses his lips together. Not a shapeshifter, not a demon. Not a revenant or a wight or an incubus either.

He's got a priceless gun to go fetch and no time to waste, but his old, deep-seated hunter curiosity ( _what is it, what does it do, how do I kill it?_ ) is awake again after so long. Ain't much that passes the silver, salt, holy water _and_ vervain tests, and nothing that he remembers that can also change its shape. Wheels within wheels.

For a moment, he hesitates. Then he hefts the body over his shoulder in a fireman's lift, staggers up the hill to the cabin where they keep all the hardware. Somehow makes it down the ladder to the basement before dropping the thing on the floor, his bad shoulder aching like a bitch, the healing wound in his back straining.

There's a pair of handcuffs on the table ( _relics of Risa's cop days_ ), and he shackles the thing to the heavy iron table. Stands up and flicks on the light – it flickers for a moment but the generator holds. He climbs back upstairs, heads out, and spots Theo, beckons him over.

"We're gonna have to wait a few before we move out," he tells the kid. "Do a perimeter run. Check all the wards. _All_ of them. Triple-check the fuckers, okay?"

Theo's eyes narrow, assessing, but he doesn't ask, bless him. Just nods. "Will do."

"Good man." Dean smacks his shoulder, watches him jog away, and turns back into the cabin. Down the ladder again, and he crouches to examine the thing wearing his image.

It is exactly his height. Wears steel-capped boots with blades hidden in the toes, a silver knife stashed in the left and a rowan stake in the right. Its jacket is heavy canvas, the type he favours, with anti-possession and anti-illusion patches sewn onto the inside, and secret pockets that hold a rosary, a pouch of dried vervain, and a faded Polaroid of Mary Winchester.

All in all, in his search of it, Dean confiscates: a rowan stake, a silver-plated Swiss Army knife, a six-inch Bowie knife ( _the exact double of one John Winchester gave him for his fourteenth birthday_ ), a hip flask of holy water, a blister-pack strip of six Valium, a well-worn set of lockpicks ( _that he'd know with his eyes shut_ ), a lucky Indian-head dollar, a switchblade sewn into the lining of its jeans, two box-cutters, a blessed razorblade ( _hidden in the back of a battered old brick of a cell that he lost on a werewolf hunt in '11_ ), a clip of the bullets he favours for his pearl-handled Colt, a straightened-out paperclip threaded through the cuff of its shirt, and a 2009 Lynyrd Skynyrd ticket stub with two phone numbers ( _Cas's first cell and the last number Dean had for Sam_ ) scrawled on the back.

It has an anti-possession tattoo over its heart. Freckles down its cheeks and neck and shoulders, the light creamy tan Dean's turn in wintertime. Fresh sunburn blooming across its nose and cheekbones. A cheap black watch on its left wrist, braided leather bracelets around its right, a heavy silver ring on its right hand, scored with scratches from being used as a bottle opener.

Of Dean's three most distinctive scars, it has only Castiel's handprint on its left shoulder ( _the livid red it was before it faded to its current pale pink_ ), not the thin white one Meg scored down his hairline, or the dark keloid that twists around the top of his thigh. In fact, it is almost scarless, with only the handprint, a few fading marks on its hands and forearms, and a round puncture wound in the shin ( _fucking rabid jackalope, if memory serves_ ) marring its pale skin. Its nose is broken and healed very slightly crooked ( _Alastair, after he broke out of Castiel's Devils' Trap_ ).

Dean stands up, passes his hand down his face. God, he wishes Bobby were here. He never was the brains of this goddamn operation. He's a weapon, always has been.

But there's no Bobby, no ( _Sam_ ) Dad, no Castiel, no one to tell him how or what to do. Just him and his freaking clone. So he sits down, back against the wall. Draws his pistol, sets about cleaning it. He's always done his best thinking, such as it is, while he's occupied with something else.

Of course, he should really just kill it. Cut off its head, stake its heart, burn the body and scatter the ash at a crossroads, bury the heart and head on consecrated ground. Dad's old method ( _perfected by Sam_ ) to beat all comers.

But more than he wants to gank it, he wants to _understand_. This is something new. Something different. The strangest thing that's happened to him in years. Possibly ever. Definitely since Croatoan overtook obsessive ghosts and faded Old Gods and crazy fucking witches and became the only game in town. The last three years have been on the whole grindingly awful, extravagantly bizarre at least makes an interesting change of pace.

Dean cleans his gun and watches his unconscious clone out the corner of his eye. When it stirs, a German word flies suddenly through his head, summoned up from one of those endless afternoons poring through dusty books at Singer Salvage: _Doppelgänger._

An omen, Bobby had called it. One of the rarest of ill omens.

"What the hell?" the double mutters, jerking at the cuffs. Its voice is off, familiar and alien, the way Dean's voicemail message used to sound when he played it back. It sounds like ( _Sam_ ) Dad.

Dean cocks his pistol. Stares it in the too-wide green eyes. "I should be asking that question, don't you think? In fact, why don't you give me one good reason why I shouldn't gank you right here and now?" He means it. In fact, he's hoping with everything he's got that the double will come out with some not-Doppelgänger explanation, and then he'll put a bullet in its brain and everyone goes home happy.

Of course, it doesn't. It comes back with attitude, and some story about Zachariah pulling a Back To The Future II and sending Dean's thirty-year-old self five years into the future. It's crazy talk, a straight-up bad acid trip, but on the other hand, it's just crazy enough to ring true.

Slowly, not quite believing he's actually running with this, Dean says, "Okay. If you're me, then tell me something only I would know."

The double thinks for a moment, its lips pursed in a kind of sarcastic half-flirtation that makes Dean want to smack ( _himself)_ it in the face. All those smoky bars. All the drunken one-night stands and hiding the lovebites and the lube and the loneliness after. So fucking stupid.

Then the double tells him about Rhonda Hurley, of all the things. Rhonda Hurley and her pink satin panties. Of all the fucking things. That's one he buried so deep ( _except for drunken nights alone with his left hand_ ) he'd almost forgotten it himself.

Christ. Between that and the scars, the sunburn fresh like it only just stepped into the summer, all the bits and pieces it carries in the exact same places he'd carry them – maybe it _is_ himself from ( _before Sam said_ yes) 2009. Hell, maybe that's what Doppelgängers are – versions of yourself caught out of time. Could be. Not like the lore had much in the way of better explanations, so far as Dean remembers.

Curiouser and curiouser.

His double says something about the Croatoan virus, and Dean answers on autopilot. He's already thinking back through the plan for tonight – if it's a Doppelgänger, he's gonna need back-up, a plan B – maybe Theo –

Then that grating not-him-not-Dad voice says, "What about Sam?" and all at once Dean goes still.

He licks his dry lips and tells it, "Heavyweight showdown in Detroit. From what I understand, Sam didn't make it." Not a lie. Just not the truth.

The Doppelgänger isn't satisfied with that. Of _course_ it isn't. Dean can see the desperate, half-hysterical fear-need-love ( _got to save him, can't do it, can't live without him_ ) written all over its face, so familiar he wants to puke. Pathetic.

Dean lets it whine a little more, because he knows better than anyone that telling it to shut up and listen to sense will do jack shit. He double-checks his gun before holstering it. Refills his hip flask of holy water, tucks an extra rosary into one of his jacket's secret pockets – bringing a knife to a gun fight, maybe, but you don't walk into the queen of the crossroad's house without a little extra mojo.

When it realises Dean is going to leave it cuffed to an immovable table, the double starts to panic. Oh, it puts up a good front, all snark and wide butter-wouldn't-melt eyes, but he knows. He can see its knuckles going white, the rapid rhythmic tapping of its fingers, as it tries to stay grounded in the here-and-now and stop its mind wandering off back to Alastair's rack. Getting chained up did kinda lose its appeal after Hell.

"Oh, come on," the double wheedles. Its voice is starting to fray at the edges. "Don't you trust yourself?"

He just stares at it and says, "No. Absolutely not."

As he turns his back to walk out, his Doppelgänger curses vehemently under its breath. There's a nasty coil of satisfaction in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

When Dean gets outside, Theo and the rest are leaning against the cars, ready to go. They look pissy at being kept waiting, but nobody challenges him when he raises his eyebrows expectantly. They just heft their rifles and get into the cars. Must be able to tell he's not in the mood to take anyone's shit.

He tosses Theo the keys to his favourite of their two armoured cars. "My shoulder hurts like a bitch, you're driving."

Theo grins, still young enough that driving's a novelty, then frowns. "You alright to deal with this, old man?"

Dean yanks open the shotgun side door, climbs up. "Kid, I was hunting with worse before you were even born, don't give me that shit." When Theo stops rolling his eyes, and fires up the ignition, leading the way out of Chitaqua, he adds, a little softer, "'Sides, Bela ain't exactly the hand-to-hand type. We'll win this one on brains not brawn."

"Yeah? Good job you got me, then," Theo says. He grins, vivid and eager, and for a brief second Dean's heart clenches in his chest. Only just eighteen. So goddamn young, so goddamn old.

"Sure is," Dean agrees, and turns his face to watch the dark forest rush by the window.

* * *

The drive out to Bela's safehouse goes like a dream. No Croats jumping out at them, no fallen trees blocking their way, no demons trying an ambush. Even when they get within a mile of the house – half a mile – around the corner and within a stone's throw – the roads are deserted and the woods silent.

"This has gotta be a trap, right?" Theo whispers as he stops the car, his hand hovering nervously on Zachariah's stolen angel blade where it's shoved through his belt.

Dean nods. "Yeah. And we're gonna spring it." He gives Theo a wink, and swings down out of the car. Goes around back to help Jaeger haul the catering-size sacks of salt out of the trunk.

The house – grand and decaying, like a monument to the fucking human race – stands alone, windows dark. An empty royal blue sports car is parked on the mossy gravel drive. But for the rustling of leaves and the chirping of cicadas, the place is silent as the grave.

Dean sizes up the mansion's overgrown but not impenetrable garden, thinks, _yeah_. He turns to Theo, points at the sacks of salt, makes a circling motion with one finger.

Kid doesn't need telling twice. While Dean keeps watch, one hand on the hilt of his knife, the other at his gun, Theo gestures to Ted and Jaeger, picks up the salt, and sets about encircling the house with it.

It takes too long and makes too much noise for Dean's liking, so full of adrenaline every snapping twig sounds like a gunshot, every wasted second feels like a lifetime. But eventually it's done and Theo is leading the other two back toward the cars, tossing empty sacks into the trunk.

Alright. Dean rotates his aching shoulders, cracks his knuckles. Beckons Theo over. Bends his head to whisper in his ear, "Give me fifteen minutes. If I'm not out in that time, y'all torch the building, you hear? Torch the building and get the gun out the ashes."

Theo's black eyes are unreadable in the darkness, but he nods tightly. Dean slaps his shoulder.

Time to rock and roll.

Knife in his hand, Dean steps delicately over the salt ring, and ( _why the hell not_ ) walks up to the front door. He doesn't even have to break it down, a hand on the tarnished doorknob and it swings open.

Inside, the house is possibly the creepiest building he's ever been in, and that's in a long and storied history of breaking into haunted houses. A few years ago, it must have been stunning, some rich motherfucker's little palace, all dark stone floors and sleek wood and leather furniture, mirrors and fancy vases and family photos.

Now the place is covered in dust and debris, grass and vines pushing their way in through cracked windows, pale wallpaper smeared with ichor and mud, moss and lichen clinging to everything wooden. Photographs faded by rain and sun still hang in filthy frames. Sigils and slogans in Hell's dialect of Aramaic are daubed on the walls, the floor, the high ceilings, in what looks like dried blood. The air is heavy with the smell of rot, of decay, but above that, overpoweringly, of sulphur.

Barely daring to breathe, Dean picks his way down the long hall, light-footed as you can be in steel-toed boots. What he wouldn't give for the solid presence of Jo, or even Cas, at his back right now. He's alone, deep in enemy territory, head in the lion's den, and everything in him, every instinct is screaming at him to get out. To run like a fucking coward.

He grits his teeth. Creeps forward. Scrutinises the doors leading off from the hall on either side. Stops at one which is almost clean of stains, its handle dull but free of the coating of dust that's settled everywhere else.

Faintly, he hears the distinctive sound of liquid being poured into a glass. Then drinking, and a satisfied little gasp at the end of it. Most definitely a feminine gasp.

Knife at the ready, Dean pushes on the door with the flat of his hand, slips through it.

"Hello, Dean, sweetheart."

He's standing in what looks like it used to be a dining room, dominated by a long wooden table, lit by a single, flickering, lightbulb hanging bare from the cracked ceiling. A woman is lounging in a high-backed chair on the other side of the room, feet propped up on the table. Her face is different, the features sharper, and her hair is a darker brown, but she looks more than a little like the Bela Talbot Dean once knew. She's wrapped in a buttery leather coat that was probably hideously expensive once upon a time, and knee-high boots of a matching colour, splattered liberally with dried blood. Her eyes glow scarlet.

On the table in front of her, one manicured hand rests negligently on a long-barrelled revolver.

"What took you so long?" Bela asks, smiling like a shark.

"Oh, you know me, sugar, I like to make an entrance." The snark comes on reflex, buying time as he sizes up the angles, the distance he'd have to lunge to get the Colt. There's no chance, she'd shoot him before he got to the table, easy, couldn't miss. "Hate to disappoint an old friend – it's been, what? Six years?"

"More like six hundred, by my reckoning," she says. Her tongue flicks red over her teeth, her expression unmistakeably _hungry_.

"You got me there." Dean takes a steadying breath. Reminds himself that she may just be one of what Alastair, with a master artisan's contempt for the sales department, used to call _the crossroads whores,_ but she's still a threat. This is the woman who outwitted himself and his brother when she was just a human, with a human's weakness. This is the demon who clawed her way from nothing to the top of the Pit.

This is the one with her hand on the gun that will kill ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer.

If he can just keep her talking – how long has it been? Five minutes? If he can keep her talking until Theo lights the place up, then they're golden.

Bela is still looking at him like she'd like to lick the meat from his bones. "Don't think too hard, sweetie, it'd be a shame if you ruptured something before you've even heard my offer."

He laughs aloud. "Oh, if you think I'm gonna make any kinda deal with you, if you think I'm gonna do one thing but stab your bitch ass –"

Calmly, quietly, she says, "Well, I'm offering you the Colt, but the choice is yours." When he stops in his tracks, she grins, smug as a snake. "Mm, yes, I thought that might get your attention." With the hand that isn't caressing the gun, she reaches to the side and picks up a bottle of what he thinks might be champagne. She smashes the neck against the edge of the table and pours the fizzy pale liquid into a dusty wine glass. "Can I offer you a drink, darling? For old times' sake?"

"Cut the bullshit," Dean snaps. "What the fuck is this? You give me the Colt, I sign over my soul, huh? The hell do I got that you want?"

Bela stretches languidly, drains her glass in one. "Dean, you wound me. I'm not so mercenary as all that. The gun is a gift. No strings attached." And she pushes the gun, sends it sliding across the dusty tabletop toward him.

Slowly, Dean steps forward. Glancing from side to side, watching the demon and his surroundings like a hawk, because there's going to be a catch, it's a trap, there has to be a catch. He'll touch it and the place will go up in flames, he'll be trapped by a spell, dragged into the Pit – _something_.

His fingers close on cold metal. He picks up the gun Samuel Colt made a hundred and fifty years earlier, the gun he killed Azazel with, the gun that fits his hand like no other ever has.

Nothing happens.

Bela's eyes glitter at him like rubies.

He cocks the pistol and points it at her. Square between the eyes. At this range, he can't miss.

"Oh, would this be when I mention there are two hundred Croats out in the woods, and the only reason they aren't tearing your friends to shreds right now is that I am controlling them?" Bela tilts her head, tapping at her temple. There's laughter in her voice, barely restrained.

Demon mind-whammy. Fuck. He could kill Bela, but with those odds it'd be a miracle if he got out alive. He could wait, and let Theo burn them both, but chances are _Theo_ would die before he could retrieve the gun. Fucking Bela. God _damn_ it.

Through gritted teeth, he says, "Stalemate."

"Quite." She leans forward, intent. "Let me give you a third option. You put up the gun, I tell you where Lucifer will be two days from now, we both walk out of here in one piece. Then you go put darling Sammy out of the world's misery."

Dean laughs again. "Oh, sure. You're gonna give up the devil. Absolutely. Of _course_ you are. And that's not a trap at all."

Bela doesn't hit him with any more sarcasm, no witty retorts, just says evenly, "Jackson County Mental Hospital, Missouri. Just outside of Kansas City. There's a rose garden behind the hospital. He'll be there."

He stares at her. She stares right back. The predatory smile is gone, all that brittle bravado, the smug, mocking laughter in her eyes.

Dean was raised a hunter, spent a lifetime canvassing witnesses and interrogating vics. Learning to tell the fantasists and the nutjobs and the liars and the guilty from the truthful – by skill and long practice but, more than that, by just listening to his gut. And right now? His gut's saying _true_.

He's standing in a house that stinks of sulphur, with demoniac sigils daubed up the walls in blood, talking to the motherfucking _queen of the crossroads,_ and he actually believes she's being genuine.

Slowly, he angles the gun to point at the ceiling. "Suppose I buy this. Just why the fuck would a demon want to gank the Devil? Don't y'all think he's, like, Our Father, which art in Hell, all that shit?"

Bela shrugs, flashes him a grin. "What can I say, it's hard to source Moët in an Apocalypse."

_Lie_. Dean brings the Colt back up. "Try again, sugar."

"Not quite as stupid as you look, then." She tosses her hair, purses her lips a little, inspects her nails. It's like watching someone paint on a mask. Then she says, voice low and black and fervent, "I never did get along with Gods." She looks up at him, red eyes gleaming, smiling sweetly. "Nor with fathers. Give my love to Sammy darling, won't you?"

* * *

When Dean walks out of Bela's mansion, scuffing a gap into the salt line with one foot as he goes, his back-up have the Molotovs ready and look nervous as cats on a hot tin roof. Seems a couple of Croats got loose from the Jedi mind control and they had a bit of a scuffle. They look at him like he's crazy when he tells them to leave without torching the house, but they do as they're told. As he's getting into the car, driver's seat this time, Dean's eye catches on a nasty scratch down Jaeger's hand.

They stop to take a leak an hour into the drive back, and Jaeger's looking flushed, feverish. By the time Chuck and Erin are opening the gates to Chitaqua, his eyes are red-rimmed and he's looking twitchy, on edge.

Theo catches Dean's eye and he nods, holds up two fingers. _Got it covered_.

Dean gets out of the car, the Colt a reassuring weight at the small of his back, and tosses Jaeger a beer. He knocks it back and Dean reaches for the pistol at his thigh, draws it, quick and quiet so the man won't even know what hit him –

And then an awful not-him-not-Dad voice is yelling, "Hey! _Hey!_ Watch out!" And Jaeger's head snaps around and his eyes go wide as Dean pulls the trigger ( _straight between the eyes, even Dad'd be satisfied_ ) and Theo's looking from Dean to his Doppelgänger and hissing, "What the fuck, man, what the fuck?" and _Christ_ this is why he chained that son-of-a-bitch up.

The Doppelgänger is standing in front of Cas and Dean's cabin, eyes huge and shocked, like its hands aren't covered with as much blood as his own. Behind it, Cas comes out onto the porch, reeling as he goes. He looks at the body, at the gun in Dean's hand, and his brows draw tight.

Erin is hissing something to Ted, and Theo's cussing a baffled blue streak, and Jaeger's corpse is bleeding sluggishly at Dean's feet. There's tension in the air, bordering on panic, crackling like static electricity, and he knows, _knows,_ that any second now this will go bad. Someone's about to freak.

He turns to Theo, to Ted and Erin, and Chuck bug-eyed on their other side, and puts on his father's best _don't-talk-back-to-me-boy_ drill sergeant voice. "I'm not gonna lie to you. Me and him—it's a pretty messed-up situation we got going. But believe me, when you need to know something, you will know it." Catching Theo's eye, he jerks a thumb toward the cabin that holds the library, all their maps and notes and streamlined anti-demon wards. "Until then, we all got work to do."

Before anyone can say anything else, he stalks forward, grabs his double by the arm and frogmarches it off toward the hardware cabin. Where it should have stayed, goddammit. Out of sight, out of mind.

He could kill himself for being stupid enough to leave the Doppelgänger alone. No one knows better than he does: you don't leave Dean Winchester alone, even chained up and without all his hidden knives and lockpicks, you just _don't_. It's asking for trouble and there's enough of that as is.

Cas's gaze on them as they walk is a physical thing. When Dean turns to look over at him, he won't make eye contact. His face is a mask, wiped blank and expressionless, the way it used to be when they were knee-deep in demons and Croats and he was sinking right back down into that old angelic coldness.

Even now, something in Dean's gut tightens at having that empty stare ( _I pulled you out of Hell, I can throw you back_ ) turned on him.

"Christ's sake," he mutters under his breath. The Doppelgänger shoots him a curious look, and he tightens his grip on its arm, hustles it inside. It's an act of tremendous personal restraint that he doesn't throw it onto the floor, beat ( _his_ ) its face to a pulp. "What the fuck was that?"

And of course the double rounds on him, flushing with outrage. "What the fuck was _that_? You just shot a man in cold blood!"

_Yeah, and I've done it before and I'll do it again and you know it_. Dean bites down on the sarcasm, the honesty. Bats back his Doppelgänger's sanctimonious bleating as calmly as he can, like he's only talking down one more squeamish civilian.

Sure enough, it works. The Doppelgänger subsides. Nods along like Dad's good little soldier when he tells it he's calling the shots here. Lets him pour it out a generous measure of his whiskey ( _breaking out the good stuff_ ) and drinks it all in one deep swallow.

Dean watches it from beneath his lids, fascinated despite himself. It's like staring into a funhouse mirror, the reflection perfect and yet not. With his anger tamped down, the strangeness of it is itching under his skin, prickling at the back of his neck. There's something – something _soft_ about the Doppelgänger in some way he can't put his finger on. Like all of Dean's hard sharp edges have been sandpapered down and smoothed away, leaving _this_.

Maybe it's because, at thirty, Dean still hadn't accepted the truth of what he is, what he's always been ( _a tool, a weapon, a rackman_ ). Maybe it's because the Doppelgänger stepped out of a time before ( _Sam said_ yes) Croatoan came out of the closet and every goddamn person on the planet lost their softness or lost their life.

Either way, he hates ( _envies_ ) it.

The double finishes its drink, wipes its lips on the back of its hand. "What was the mission, anyway?"

Dean grins. Can't help it. Reaches around to the small of his back and pulls out the Colt. The moment the Doppelgänger sees it, its face lights up, as though it's just seen the love of its worthless life. One hand reaches out to brush tentative fingertips over the age-darkened steel, the words carved into the long barrel.

_Non timebo mala_.

Fear no evil. Not even in the face of ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer himself. Samuel Colt knew what he was about.

The Doppelgänger asks where the Colt was hidden, and Dean feeds it some vague bullshit ( _fuck you, you don't get to know the story, you weren't here)_. Pours himself another finger or so of whiskey, raises the glass ( _to Dad, to Jo, to that double-crossing bitch Bela_ ), and tells it, "Tonight? Tonight, I'm gonna kill the Devil."

The alcohol burns like victory down his throat.

A moment of silence, then the Doppelgänger scratches at the back of its neck, left hand rubbing at where the handcuffs chafed its wrist raw. "Y'all got a shower round here anywhere? It's been, like, two days and I am getting ripe, man."

Just like that, Dean gets it. Like someone flipped a switch, he knows what it is about the double that makes it look so goddamn delicate. It's _clean_.

Yeah, there's mud smeared over its shoes and the ragged hems of its jeans, and its knuckles are streaked with oil and flaking blood, but it's clean. Doesn't have the grime worked down into the quicks of its nails and the creases of its skin, the greasy strands of sun-bleached hair clinging together, the deep indelible staining on the soles of its feet, creeping up between its toes. A year and a half since anyone at Chitaqua had a shower and Dean hadn't even realised that he doesn't see the dirt anymore. He has never, _never,_ in his life felt so profoundly filthy. Not even when he crawled his way out of a pine box, his soul still bloody from the Pit.

He grabs a dented tin bucket from the corner of the room, holds it out. "There's a tap either end of camp," he tells the Doppelgänger. It stares at him in horror and he gives it a grin that's all teeth. "What, the Apocalypse ain't cushy enough for you?"

The Doppelgänger just shakes its head silently.

* * *

They drag Jaeger's corpse back out the gates, dig a shallow grave and bury it maybe a hundred yards beyond the perimeter fence ( _can't spare the gasoline for a salt'n'burn_ ).

Well. After fireman's carrying his younger, slightly heavier self ( _hasn't spent a couple years living off of army rations_ ) across the camp, Dean's bad shoulder is giving him hell, and the stitches Risa put in his back two days ago threaten to pull out when he takes the feet to help Cas lift Jaeger's corpse. Either he lets the pain show through or Cas can just read him that well, because he snaps at Dean, "Put him down. No, no you're not okay, put him down before you cripple yourself, fearless leader. Fuck's sake."

So Dean lets the heavy booted feet fall to the mud. The moment he lets them go his shoulder eases up, not entirely but enough to make him hiss in relief. His Doppelgänger steps up, neck still damp from its makeshift shower, and takes the body by the feet, unasked.

Cas gives it this look, this smile, and it hits Dean like a slap in the face because that is Cas's _real_ smile. Small and faint, almost shy, the creases of his tired eyes breaking into laughter lines. Above them the sky is turning the cusp of dawn, a pale fade from pink to blue, and Cas's eyes are bluer than the ocean and warm in a way that Dean had half-forgotten they could be, and Cas is smiling. Smiling bright and pure and honest.

That smile had always made everything seem worth it. Had gotten Dean through the long days and dragged him out of bed and kept him on his feet and fighting. Had been what he'd lived for, really. It feels like that was a lifetime ago. Like that time, the good old days at the beginning of the Apocalypse, that smile, the people he and Cas used to be, it was all nothing but a myth. A fairytale.

And now, here Cas is, his real smile on his gorgeous face, when all the narcotics and alcohol in what's left of the world aren't enough to coax it out of him, and god knows Dean can't.

The Doppelgänger just blinks at Cas, a little weirded out, counts _one-two-three-lift_ and they stagger off, Jaeger's dead body swinging between them. Dean follows in their wake, shovel thrown over one shoulder, fingernails biting into his palm.

They dig the grave in double-time, the three of them. Get it done before the sun is really up and beating down, thank fuck. When it's done, the body covered with salt and the earth filled back in, the Doppelgänger brushes its hands off on its jeans, and stretches, fingers interlaced and arms reaching up over its head. "Man, I need to crash. Been running on fumes for two days, I gotta get my four hours."

Cas's eyes flicker over the Doppelgänger, lingering at the stripe of winter-white skin exposed where its t-shirt rides up, at the strain and bunch of the muscles in its shoulders. His chapped lips part and the pink point of his tongue flashes out. And Dean hasn't seen Cas's smile in so long, but he's sure as hell seen _that_ look often enough. Even if the love between them has been salted and burned, the lust never died, and Dean knows it never will. As surely as he knows that at thirty years old he didn't dare to dream of laying a finger on ( _his angel_ ) Castiel.

He knows Cas knows that, too.

Out of sheer malice, Dean says, "Cas, he can sleep in your cabin, right?"

Cas shoots Dean a truly filthy look, but there's nothing to back it up these days, and Dean just bats his lashes, innocent. Cas rolls his eyes and turns to the Doppelgänger, drawling, "Yeah, of course."

The Doppelgänger opens its mouth, looks from Dean to Cas to Dean, shuts its mouth again. Dean can practically see the gears working in its brain, and has to wonder if it's that obvious when _he's_ thinking something over. Finally, it smiles, kinda forced, and says, "Thanks, buddy. I'm ready to drop."

"Awesome." Dean brushes his muddy hands on his jeans ( _won't come off, the dirt won't ever come off_ ). "Let's make a move, fellas, the grownups have work to do."

* * *

The day is sultry, the heat hanging humid in the air. The Doppelgänger sleeps and Cas vanishes off to do whatever it is Cas does. At the war table, Theo sketches Devils' Traps compulsively on scraps of paper, paging through book after book as though anything of Bobby's can offer advice on going up against ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer. At some point little Rachael Weiss comes in with a tray of ( _shitty_ ) food. Risa is nowhere to be seen.

Dean is caught between apathy and manic energy. Between inspecting the maps of the Kansas City area, pacing the length of the cabin as he runs through endless permutations of the plan and everything that could go wrong, and cleaning the Colt in silence, lost inside his head.

He can't stop thinking about his Doppelgänger, what its existence implies. Not so much the fact that the Doppelgänger is an omen ( _he never expected to outlive Sam anyway_ ), but that it was _sent_ to him. Sent to him from five years ago.

Angels don't do anything for shits and giggles. His younger self is here for a reason.

Time travel. He wouldn't believe it if Castiel hadn't once thrown him into nineteen-seventy-fucking-three.

The question is this: is time travel like _Slaughterhouse Five_ and _Dune_ , where everything always has happened and always will, with no other path possible, or is it like _Star Trek,_ where the timeline can be twisted and turned back on itself?

Once upon a time, Dean had laid out under the stars at Singer Salvage with Jo's head on his stomach and Cas's on his chest, and Cas had told Jo that time ( _was wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey_ ) wasn't linear. Dean remembers that so clearly. How vast the sky had been. How soft Cas's hair was under his palm. He remembers that they'd been passing a joint around, too, that when they'd kissed, Cas tasted of good sweet pot. Had he been lying, even then? Spinning a beautiful grandiose mirage out of drugs and an angel's disregard for honesty? Or was he telling the truth?

Can the past be changed?

* * *

When the sun has sunk down below the mountains and the fireflies come out, Dean calls a council of war.

Theo knows the plan already, was there while Dean was cooking it up, and he slopes off to sneak some food instead. So it's just Dean, and Cas, mildly stoned and tilting his chair back on two legs like he's in a boring math class, and Risa, who's snippy and cold and apparently holding a fucking grudge over Dean screwing Jane, and, lurking in a shadowed corner, Dean's Doppelgänger. He – _it_ – keeps interjecting, and it makes Dean's skin crawl every goddamn time.

Thing is, when he's not expecting it, that voice sounds like Dad. And every time he looks up, and sees instead of John Winchester his own face, his ( _stupid, arrogant, worthless_ ) self from five years past come back to haunt him, it's like getting a bucket of ice water to the head. Dean deserves a fucking medal for keeping on track, but he does.

He runs them through the plan, just the bare bones, and Cas makes some wiseass remark, and Dean snaps, "You calling my plan reckless?"  Even though it's nothing Cas hasn't said a hundred times before.

Cas shrugs, drawls, "Are you saying we, uh, walk in straight up the driveway, past all the demons and the Croats, and we shoot the Devil?"

Those sad blue eyes weigh heavy on him. Cas knows. He _knows_. There's nothing in his face that Dean could specifically point to that says, _Cas knows_ , but he's certain of it. You don't spend five and a half years ( _living with_ ) hunting with someone, ( _trusting_ ) fighting alongside him, ( _loving)_ sleeping with him, without being able to read the son-of-a-bitch. And that goes both ways.

Dean can't even count the number of times he repeated Dad's policy on traps ( _you gotta spring 'em_ ) to Cas. How many plans they made with Dean or Jo or occasionally some roped-in civilian as the bait or the distraction and the rest of them as the cavalry. Worked like a charm, always did.

So yeah. Cas knows.

Dean looks him straight in the eye. Tells him, "Yes."

"Okay," Cas shrugs, purses his lips, voice drug-soft, "well, if you don't like _reckless_ , I could use … _insouciant,_ maybe?"

For fuck's sake. Dean leans forwards, palms pressed against the stained tabletop. "Are you coming?"

Cas hesitates, and for a moment, Dean can't breathe. This is it, the moment when Cas will choose either to die fighting or live a coward. And he can't tell which way the decision'll go, can't even tell which way he _wants_ it to go.

With a twist of his neck Cas looks back at the Doppelgänger, which has been watching them both with fierce intensity. Then he turns back and says to Dean, "Of course." He sounds old, old and terribly tired.

Inside, Dean goes still. There's no relief, no regret, just this vast quiet emptiness. Calm.

That's it, then. It's not a surprise, not really. After all, he's been Cas's downfall once already.

* * *

The Doppelgänger wants to know why Dean is bringing it along to Kansas City, because of course it does. Dean's starting to feel a hell of a lot of sympathy for Dad, and how mad he'd get when Dean started asking questions on hunts.

_Just keep your goddamn mouth shut and do as you're told._

If Dean had been just a little bit better at following orders ( _save Sammy or kill him_ ), the world wouldn't be in the mess that it is.

"I want to know what's going on," the Doppelgänger presses. Its jaw is set, stubborn, its eyes bright and defiant. The expression is so fucking familiar and Dean wants to wipe it away with his fists. That naïve belief that if he grit his teeth and stuck to his guns then, fuck it, Dad and the world and everyone else could go hang, he'd find another way.

That sometimes there is no other way is a lesson that Dean didn't learn until after Detroit, after watching ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam walk barefoot across the Nile as it ran with blood, after the fall of Atlanta, after burning Ellen Harvelle's broken body on a pyre in the empty shell of New Orleans. But maybe – just maybe – he can make _this_ Dean learn it a little sooner.

"Yeah, okay," he says. "You're coming because I want you to see something. I want you to see our brother." The word tastes foreign on his lips.

"Sam?" The Doppelgänger does an honest-to-God double-take. "I thought – I thought he was dead." There's the faintest tremor to its voice. A flicker of an ancient fear in pale eyes.

Dean smiles mirthlessly. "Sam didn't die in Detroit. He said _yes_."

"Yes?" The Doppelgänger's face freezes. He opens his mouth and closes it again, blinking rapidly, gaze flicking from one side to the other, as if he thinks he's gonna see something ( _anything_ ) in one of the cabin's corners that will take this away. Make it not be true.

Dean remembers being that person. Remembers the bottomless pit of how he'd loved his damned-at-six-months-old brother. Remembers wishing that the world would end just so long as this one arrogant little boy with demon blood could live.

He remembers getting what he wanted.

He realises, right then, that even if the past _can_ be changed, if all his fuck-ups _can_ be undone, they won't be. It is, as it always has been really, all on him.

There's a kind of calmness behind that thought.

* * *

"Yeah, that oughta do it."

"Cool." Theo cuts off the black duct tape he's been using to strap up Dean's bad right shoulder, tosses the roll on the table. As Dean pulls his shirt back on, the kid goes wandering around the cabin, leafing through some of Bobby's old books. "So, like, I know you don't think we're gonna be too in the shit with demons, but I was seeing if I couldn't cook up some, like, super-hot wards, and I figured –"

Yeah, about that. Rotating his shoulder experimentally ( _the tape pulls but holds, the joint feeling a damn sight more secure than it has in a long while_ ), Dean says, "Theo. You're sitting this one out."

Like he knew it would, Theo's temper flares. Predictable as a blown-out tyre to cap off a shitty day. "What the fuck? Are you _serious_ , man? You can't fucking _do_ this –"

Dean gives him a tight little smile. "Yeah, I can. You're staying here. Get over it." And he heads for the door, ducks through the beaded fly curtain and out onto the porch.

"The fuck, man?" Theo's hot on his heels. Since the boy hit eighteen this spring, he's been on less of a hair-trigger, but all that old teenage fury's still lurking under his skin, and before Dean knows what's happening, he's all-out shouting. "Is this – is this because you think I'm a kid? Because I ain't a fucking _child_ , Winchester, y'all wouldn't've gotten _shit_ done without me and you know it! This is such a –"

Well, sincerely, fuck this. Dean spins around, grabs Theo at the tops of his arms and shakes him, hard enough to snap his teeth together. "Okay, you listen to me and you listen good," he says, calm and cold and quiet. "You are staying here. Because this job? I'm not coming back from it."

"What – but –"

Dean drags him to the side, stabs a finger towards where his double is sitting back on his heels and talking earnestly to a blank-faced ( _atta girl_ ) Rachael Weiss. "See that? That's my Doppelgänger. You know what that is, boy? You know your lore?" He doesn't wait for Theo to reply. "It's a death omen. Most reliable one there is. You got a Doppelgänger walking around, you're about to die. Period."

For a moment, Theo just stares at him, silent. Then he passes a hand down his face, and says, almost a whisper, "And – and Risa? Cas?"

"Come on, Theo, you know the plan, don't ask dumbass questions," Dean snaps. "Reason you're staying behind is I trust you to use your goddamn _brain_. Ain't no-one else I can leave in charge."

All of the rage, the defiance, is visibly draining from Theo. Under Dean's hands he's trembling. "Me? _Me_? But – but I don't –"

Dean shakes him again. "These people, they need someone to look after them. Someone that knows their shit, ain't gonna flip out when they gotta pull the trigger on some Croat or exorcise some demon, what the fuck ever. I've done that for two years, I can't anymore, so you're gonna have to step up and be a man about this, Theo, okay?"

"I … yeah." Theo closes his eyes, bites down at his bottom lip. Swallows. Then he opens his eyes again, and his chin comes up and he looks at Dean and nods. "Yeah. Okay. I understand. I … I know what I've gotta do. I won't let you down."

Something's threatening to close up Dean's throat. The look on Theo's young dark face, sweet and fierce and trusting, he remembers looking at his father like that. He remembers Theo looking at him like that as they drove away from the ( _prison_ ) refugee camp in Alabama, remembers Ben Braeden looking at him like that. And fuck, if Theo had been his actual flesh and blood son, he couldn't be prouder.

But there's no words. There's really no words. Nothing he can say.

And so he reaches down and takes the custom-carved pearl-handled M1911 pistol that was his sixteenth birthday present from its thigh holster. Holds it out, handle first, to Theo. "You better take damn good care of that, or I am gonna haunt your ass."

"Alright, alright, old man." Theo rolls his eyes, but takes the gun almost reverently, tucks it safely into his jacket pocket.

The kid watches silently _(and there's a goddamn miracle_ ) as Dean pulls the Colt from its place tucked into his jeans at the small of his back, slides it into the holster. Christ, it feels good to have it there. Not one damn thing went right after Bela stole that gun, but now Dean has his good-luck charm back where it ought to be and he can feel the weight of purpose riding on his shoulders.

He nods to Theo, pretending not to see the glint of tears in his eyes, and turns away. Steps down off the porch and heads over to the waiting cars.

While Ted and Risa and Chuck load up the armoured cars and the Jeep, Dean's Doppelgänger is still crouched down talking to Rachael, joined now by her sister Emma. The girls both look sceptical as all hell, and when Dean walks past, they both look past the Doppelgänger and throw him up a salute. It's hardly Marine Corps standard, but Dean returns it with a half-smile. Good girls, those.

Cas is sitting on the hood of the Jeep, knees drawn up to his chest, grubby hands linked around his ankles. He's watching the Doppelgänger, and his face has this _softness_ to it, his eyes huge and round, the corners of his lips creeping up ever so slightly, a smile that's barely even there.

Back before Croatoan, before Dean knew how Cas kissed, when the only way Dean could sleep was with his head laid in Castiel's lap, sometimes he'd wake in the night and catch Cas looking at him like that. Like Dean was something beautiful and fragile and beloved, and not a tool or a weapon or a means to an end. It hurt to see that expression then and it hurts even worse to see it now.

Dean walks over to the Jeep and leans against it, arms crossed. Cas doesn't glance away from the Doppelgänger, not for a second. Conversationally, Dean says, "So, did you fuck him?"

_Now_ Cas looks over to Dean, just long enough to give him a poisonous sideways smirk. "Didn't need to."

Whatever the hell _that's_ supposed to mean. "No?"

"No." Cas stretches, clicks the vertebrae in his neck, lets out a long exhale. "See, fearless leader, _he_ still remembers how to interact with people in ways that don't involve fucking or torturing."

That knocks a laugh from him, mirthless, punched from the gut. "You know something, Cas? I really don’t like you anymore."

Cas slides off the hood of the Jeep. He picks his assault rifle up off the ground, gives a piercing whistle. The Doppelgänger raises his hand in Dean's own _be-there-in-a-minute_ signal, without looking over his shoulder. "Yeah," Cas says, "the feeling's mutual."

He doesn't sound bitter. He sounds sad, impossibly, endlessly sad and lonely, and if he'd only sounded bitter or mocking or jaded Dean could have just hated him. But he sounds so very sad, and so himself, and in that moment Dean can't bear it. He cannot fucking bear it.

As Cas shuffles, still half-high, past him, Dean grabs the sleeve of his jacket. Says, before he has time to talk himself out of it, "For whatever it's worth, Castiel, if I could do it over? I'd do it different."

Cas looks at him, and for half a heartbeat he's recognisable as the one who raised Dean from Perdition, who saw him at his lowest and his weakest and his worst and loved him even after that. The one who was his compass, his anchor, his angel. "So would I, Dean," he says, soft and dark.

He still says Dean's name like there's a sentence in just that word.

They look at each other for a moment, silently, and then Dean lets go of Cas's jacket, and Cas opens the driver's side door, and Dean walks over to his armoured car and gets in and turns his key in the ignition.

* * *

 

Chuck pulls the gates of Chitaqua open.

There's purpose humming beneath every inch of Dean's skin, and beneath that, a vast expanse of calmness. Tonight he will kill Sam and kill Lucifer and in their death throes they will kill him too. And then the world will either go about what is left of its death or Theo and Emma and Rachael and what remains of humanity will go about its rebirth.

His part in this story is so very nearly done, and he is so very very tired.

Dean drives out of Camp Chitaqua.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'arrow of time' is a concept originating with the physicist Arthur Eddington, concerning the fact that time flows in one direction and one direction only. There may be considered to be separate arrows of time, such as the thermodynamic arrow of time, which relates to the increase of entropy, and the psychological arrow of time, which relates to our perception of time.


	14. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the midst of it all, the serpent in the garden, stands a very tall man wearing white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for [canonical] major character death

_'It's the same dream: it goes on and on and on and on, but this is where it ends.'_

* * *

Five and a half minutes after Cas leads Risa and Ted down the front drive of what used to be Jackson County Mental Hospital, currently serving as Hell's Vatican City, Dean makes his move.

He slides out from behind the overturned shell of a car he's been sheltering behind, rifle ready in his hands. Stalks through the long wild grass on hunt-silent feet. He passes the Doppelgänger, still lying motionless where he fell after Dean pistol-whipped him, a trickle of blood beneath his nose. On an impulse that he can't explain, Dean toes lightly at the Doppelgänger's shoulder, and he flinches very slightly, makes a pathetic little attempt at a moan. Son-of-a-bitch ain't dead yet.

The sky above is livid with churning clouds, thunder rolling through the heavy air, but underneath it Dean can still hear the stuttering rattle of gunfire from within the hospital. The hollering, the screeching, the bitten-off screams.

Sounds like the diversion's working.

Sure enough, no one challenges him as he creeps around the eastern wing of the building, pulse thudding in his temples. There's a whipcrack of lightning, so bright it leaves retinal ghosts dancing blue across his vision, the clap of thunder loud enough that he feels the pressure of it on his eardrums, feels the ground vibrate.

Dean's spent too much of his life outside, freezing his ass off in winter and burning till his skin peels in summer, to be awestruck by the weather, but right now he can't help staring up at the sky like some damn hippie. The violet stormclouds are turning in great slow spirals, tornadoes funnelling down out of them, a dozen at least, wreathed in blinding streams of lightning, encircling the city as the quarantine wall once did.

It's the vastest storm he's ever seen. Even when he and Cas were tooling around the Midwest, tracking demons by following the progress of tornadoes and electrical storms along the horizon, they never saw anything on this scale.

If Dean had any doubts as to whether Bela was telling the truth, they're salted and burned. He knows in the marrow of his bones that only ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer could bring with him a fanfare to crack the sky.

Another burst of gunfire from inside the hospital. A harsh brief cry in a voice that's achingly familiar.

No time to waste. Any second now the demons could tear through his people and come haring out for him and it'd be game over. Dean starts moving again, quicker this time, picking up the pace, but not before he whistles. Two notes as loud as he dares, up-then-down. Cas's signal.

A spare moment later, there's a reply, faint and rattling, but still recognisable. Cas whistling twice on the same note, Dean's signal, the last extended out. _Keep going_.

More gunfire. The smell of sulphur acrid in his nostrils.

The remains of a high fence, the decorative wrought-iron gate rusted and caught off its hinges. Dean can just about make out the words on a moss-covered plaque: _Ava Ridley Memorial Rose Garden_.

He lets the assault rifle fall to the ground. It's no use to him now.

He takes the Colt from his thigh holster. It rests easy in his hand. Fits as though made for him alone, that long slim barrel nothing so much as an extension of his own arm.

When he brings it up to kiss the aged metal, it's warm under his lips. Alive. "You and me, beautiful," he tells it, a whisper. For Dad. For Jo. For Castiel. "We're gonna save the world."

* * *

Dean steps through the broken gate and into the garden.

It's grown wild, as all the world is in these late days, reclaimed by nature, but there's no chaos to it. The grass is long and lush, heads of wheat blowing pale gold in the wind. Roses are everywhere, climbing up and over rickety wooden arbours, covering the pitted redbrick of the hospital. They're the reddest blooms Dean has ever seen, redder than fire, than blood, than Hell, the Platonic ideal of the colour, and so large and heavy they droop on the stems. Here and there the last of the summer's monarch butterflies swoop around the flowers.

In the midst of it all, the serpent in the garden, stands a very tall man wearing white.

There's no hesitation. Dean's arm comes up, and he fires. The hundred-and-fifty years of recoil snaps his hand back, but he reloads, brings it back to aim again, simple as breathing, fires again. Two shots that land within an inch of each other, sent home to the nape of ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam's neck. Execution style.

Dean breathes.

Slowly, ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer turns around. He spreads his arms wide, smiles. "Go on, Dean, try again. Third time's the charm."

What else is there to do?

He pulls the trigger again. Feels the shot all the way up to his bad right shoulder.

The bullet hits ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam square between the eyes. The shot Dean's been waiting all his life to take. Perfect.

"Oh." ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer tilts his head. "Sorry to disappoint you, Dean." He takes a long-legged step forward and plucks the Colt from Dean's hand, tosses it to the side as though it were an empty sweet wrapper. He smiles at Dean, almost gentle. "I'm God's true son. No human's toy could ever harm me."

There's another roll of thunder. Dean's shaking like a leaf. Heart beating a tattoo on the cage of his ribs. He wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to laugh, wants his mother, wants Cas, wants to die. " _God's true son?_ You? – you're the _Devil_ , a scum-sucking motherfucker with an ego, just the same's every other ratfuck demon in the Pit."

( _Sam_ ) Lucifer sighs, shakes his head regretfully. "Yes, Sam did warn me you would profane."

He turns and walks a few paces toward one of the arbours, reaches out to brush gentle fingertips over the petals of the roses, and Dean is struck suddenly and overwhelmingly by déjà vu. It's the dream. The dream he had five and a half years ago.

The rose garden. _Your brother said_ yes. _I'll be seeing you soon_. Dean's gotten older and harder since then, has a Doppelgänger to prove just how much the crucible of time has changed him, but he knows, knows with absolute certainty that ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam hasn't. His brother has not aged one iota, every atom of him held in suspended animation, trapped in amber at the moment that he said _yes._

Until the end of time itself, he will look exactly as he does now, as he did when first Lucifer stepped into Dean's dreams dressed all in white and Sam.

( _Sam_ ) Lucifer looks Dean up and down, a long gaze that rakes over him from top to toe, from skin to soul. The way Castiel used to look at him ( _all the workings of his heart laid bare_ ), but not. The way Sam used to look at him ( _an open book on whose pages he'd learned to read_ ), but not. His lips shy back from his teeth, disdainful. "And to think _this_ used to be the Righteous Man … such filth in you, even for a human."

Dean laughs. Can't help it. Just the sheer absurd fucking depths of that arrogance. That hypocrisy. And his laughter sounds like Cas's, dead and hollowed out like a lightning-struck tree. "I'm not the one here who murdered, what? Six billion people."

"Oh no." ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer tilts his head, very slightly, and smiles. A smile like nothing Dean has ever seen on that ( _loathed, beloved_ ) face before. Ancient and inhuman and not-quite-sane. A smile from the heart of the Pit. "I've never killed anyone, Dean. It was all you creatures, killing one another. My hands are clean."

And ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer spreads those long-fingered hands wide. Holds them up to the weird violet-green light from the storm-ridden sky, looks at them curiously. As though even after five years his hands are still a wonder to him.

There's bile in the back of Dean's throat. He leans to one side, spits loudly on the ground. There's something vulgar about it, about spitting, something raw and _human_ and it says everything he can't put words to. ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam always had hated it when he spat. "Yeah, and Croatoan came out of some fuckin' lab freezer, did it?"

For another moment, ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer keeps on inspecting his hands. Then he looks back at Dean and says serenely, "All the Croatoan virus ever did was take the muzzle off humanity. Take away those fancy clothes, pretty words, you're all monsters on the inside. Beasts that must be put down." He smiles, beatific. "Sam knows that as well as I. That was why he came to me. He saw you creatures for what you truly are. Murderers. Cannibals. Rapists. _Demons_."

( _Sam_ ) Lucifer's lip curls as he spits that last word out like the foulest of curses. And to think of how certain Alastair and Meg and Ruby had been that their God would deliver them, raise them up and love them, like how absolutely certain Dean and Bela and Jo had been that the Colt would kill ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer and save them, oh fuck, it's fucking hilarious. Dean could laugh himself sick at the thought. Except he can't. Can't laugh, can't speak. Just. Can't. He's shaking and he feels sick and he just _cannot_. He feels too much and nothing at all.

A sudden bolt of lightning casts ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer's face in stark blue-white, and for that split-second Dean sees his brother, bright and clear, beneath the mask of the Devil.

Sam. That bastard. That _bastard_.

He moves without thinking, on deep-trained instinct. Shifts the balance of his weight, pivots and comes up swinging with a right hook as good as he's ever thrown. Behind it is all the force of two years of futility, of massacring children and whole towns and ( _Bobby, Jo_ ) people he loved, of his own heart dying as he watched everything innocent ( _Emma, silent little Rachael_ ) and beautiful ( _Castiel)_ rot away.

It's a punch that's broken jaws. Cracked walls. Knocked grown men senseless.

Without so much as blinking, ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer catches it in one gently cupped palm, as easily as Dean once caught his eight-year-old brother's punches as he taught ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam to fight in dusty motel parking lots across Texas.

Dean feels the impact, the crunch and grind of his knuckles, all the way to his taped-up shoulder. It's like punching a tank. A mountain. He staggers, thrown off balance, but the loose grip of ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer's hand holds him fast in place. That touch is shockingly cold. Absolutely cold. Like plunging his hand into the void between stars. He remembers the night of the New Year's Eve party, how he sat down in the snow and it was warm on his skin and, fuck, he was right. He was right. It wasn't cold. That wasn't cold. Dean never knew cold before this moment.

( _Sam_ ) Lucifer is still smiling, face alight with joy. "Sam was made for me, and I for him." He reaches down and pats Dean's cheek ( _cold so cold make it stop stop please stop)_ , as he might pat a whining dog. "Before you were even a gleam in your father's worthless eye, it was written that Sam would come to me and help me make Paradise anew. As it was meant to be."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Dean says, through numb lips. "Just kill me now and spare me the fucking lecture." Nowhere near his best line, but hell, if he doesn't say _something_ back, just stands here all helpless and pathetic and silent, he's gonna go insane. This son-of-a-bitch is gonna kill ( _everyone_ ) him, and ain't a damn thing he can do to stop it, but damned if he'll roll over and make it easy.

"Oh no, Dean," ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer says. "You see, I want you to understand. It was also written that the Righteous Man would be the last hope of his race. That when he dies no more will rise to stand in his place."

He smiles. Beams. And it's ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam's broad, dimple-bracketed grin of simple joy.

"When you are gone I'll put the chairs on the tables and turn out the lights. And it will be just Sam and me, walking together forever through God's perfect world."

Still that smile. That vivid grin. Familiar as Dean's own face. Recognisable, even now, as the man who saved Dean's life and stitched his wounds and sat in shotgun, singing along off-key to _Stairway to Heaven_. As the boy who died in his arms at twenty-three, on his knees in the mud at Cold Oak. The child whose runny nose he wiped, whose report cards he signed, who he fed with money he cheated and stole and whored for. The baby he rocked to sleep. On whose soft warm head he'd rest his hand when the dreams wouldn't let him rest. Who he carried out of the flames and never really let go of, not for twenty-six years.

And here he stands. Dressed in white and the Devil.

"I should have – I should've listened to Dad." Dean's shaking now, shaking and he can't stop. Crying and his throat is thick with it, choking on how much he hates and hates and hates the man before him. The one he gave away his childhood for and who in return destroyed everything he ever held dear. "I wish I'd let Jake Talley kill you. I wish I'd done it myself. Wish – I wish I'd thrown you back in the fucking fire when Dad gave you to me. I wish –"

He breaks off, transfixed, as ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer looks down, closes his eyes, and ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam looks up. Sam. Not a shadow or an echo but _Sam_. Sam exactly and totally, the points of his ears flushing red, his face twitching with rage, his fingers warm and bony and trembling where he's gripping Dean's broken hand. Gripping tight enough that the nubs of Dean's knuckles scrape against each other.

( _Lucifer_ ) Sam opens his mouth, and despite everything Dean is still hanging, breathless, waiting to hear what his brother will say. To hear that voice again, not in some dream or memory or distorted from Lucifer's forked tongue, but for real. For real.

He never sees the punch coming.

The first blow snaps his head back, stars exploding across his vision. He reels back a step as the world spins, and ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam grabs the front of his t-shirt and hauls him in close. "I fucking _hate_ you!" he screams, and drives his fist into Dean's face again, and again. He lets go of Dean's shirt, Dean drops to the floor, hitting his knees hard, scrabbling to get up, but everything's slipsliding away, and he can feel the velocity of the earth under him like he can feel his brother standing over him and he can't find his feet –

( _Lucifer_ ) Sam kicks him in the stomach. The impact drives all the air from his lungs in a single agonising rush. Dean gasps, convulsive on the ground like a dying fish. Tears in his eyes and blood in his mouth and ozone acrid in his nostrils. In the blurred corners of his peripheral vision he sees a white shoe lift, and he instinctively rolls on to his belly, hands coming up to protect his head.

But there's no savage kick. Instead the foot comes down to rest on the back of his neck, and by the crushing, incredible weight of it Dean knows it's ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer. No man ever weighed this much. No angel either. Only the accumulation of centuries of sin could be so heavy.

"It's all right, my dear," ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer croons, miles above him. All the strange rises and falls of ( _Lucifer_ ) Sam's mongrel Southern accent wiped clean. "It's all right. Yes, yes, I will, Sam. I will."

The pressure increases. It feels like he's staked to the ground, a bug pinned motionless to a card. Only that impossible, unbearable weight.

Dean's fingers curl helplessly into the soft dark earth. His eyes roll up and he sees, like a mirage, his Doppelgänger, standing only yards away, behind ( _Sam_ ) Lucifer, his face slack with shock and his eyes showing white all around.

"Goodbye, Dean," ( _Sam)_ Lucifer whispers.

The pressure on the back of his neck shifts.

Dean thinks maybe Cas –

There's a _crack_.

Everything goes white.


	15. Epilogue: 2009

_'If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way.'_

* * *

Dean meets back up with Sam just off of I-49. When his brother steps out of his obviously stolen car, six-foot-four of clashing plaid and worn-out jeans and terrible hair, giving Dean a self-conscious wave and a nervous smile, he is so amazingly _Sam_ there's a lump in Dean's throat. Christ, he's missed that kid. Missed him like he would a limb. Like he'd miss his own damn gun hand.

Beneath that, though, he's wound tight as a guitar string. Being around Sam's an exercise in waiting for the next shoe to drop, and Dean'd figured there couldn't be a bigger shoe than busting the Devil out of prison, but, well, Sammy's nothing if not an overachiever. And it's only eight hours ago that Dean watched Lucifer snap his 2014 alter ego's neck with Sam's foot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was only Zachariah pulling some more mindfuckery, but Dean'd be lying if he said that didn't make the hairs on his nape stand on end.

Of course, he keeps his game face on, doesn't let his nervousness show. When Sam asks what changed his mind ( _never did learn that his questions never have answers that he likes_ ), Dean doesn't give any details. Sam doesn't push him for any and Dean has to stop himself from feeling Sam's brow for a fever.

Hell, the Apocalypse really _is_ nigh.

Back before the whole Kansas City trip got so epically derailed, Dean was making for what looked like a particularly nasty coven of witches ( _ugh_ ) in Topeka. Sam agrees to it easily when he suggests it, no demands to see Dean's research, to pick over the evidence and come up with some bullshit hypothesis just for the sake of arguing. Just, _sounds like a plan, dude, so long's we ditch my car someplace outta the way first._ He also doesn't bitch about Dean's music, even when he turns Lynyrd Skynyrd up obnoxiously loud, and when Dean berates him for quitting a job tending bar without even liberating a couple bottles of Jack, he only rolls his eyes. No speech about alcoholism or any of that shit.

All in all, Sam's trying so hard it hurts. Dean wishes he wouldn't. It's a hell of a lot easier to trust Sam when he's being argumentative and bitchy and pretentious and not ( _lying_ ) pretending. Sam forgets Dean's been watching him pull on a mask to fool panicky witnesses and suspicious cops and concerned teachers all his goddamn life. Can't con a conman.

They get to Topeka and find a good motel, shady enough not to look twice at the impressive bruise on Dean's temple ( _courtesy his alter ego_ ) or question them paying cash ( _no point leaving Zachariah a paper trail_ ) or to try and clean the room and find all the weaponry ( _learnt_ that _lesson the hard way_ ). Once their duffels are inside, Sam announces that he's dead beat and is gonna hit the sack.

Dean makes a token attempt at teasing him, but he's pathetically grateful. Acting like Sam didn't spend the last year ( _fucking Ruby, drinking demon blood_ ) lying to him, like they didn't have a knock-down-drag-out, hide-the-sharp-objects-and-the-blunt-ones-as-well fight just three weeks ago, it's exhausting.

By the time Sam's showered ( _probably used all the hot water, the bastard_ ) and changed into his truly ratty sleeping clothes, it's fully dark outside. It's not even that late. One hell of a headtrip coming back to mid-November after three days of sultry end-of-summer heat in 2014. Shit, the whole _thing_ was a headtrip, but yeah. Mindfuck.

Once he's thought about it, though, Dean's skin starts itching again, unclean, and he can't get in the shower fast enough. Turns out there is hot water left over, glory be, and he turns it up as high as it'll go, revelling even in the honestly fairly shitty water pressure. It's his second shower in eighteen hours and swear to God, he'll never complain about motel plumbing again. Nothing like a few days in a zombie apocalypse to make you appreciate mod cons.

He scrubs until the water goes from near-scalding to arctic in about half a second and then makes a very dignified leap out of the bathtub, yelping as he goes. There's no heckling from the bedroom, so he figures Sam's gotta be asleep. Must have been telling the truth about being dead on his feet after all.

And yeah, sure enough, he's sprawled out with his ankles hanging off of the thin mattress ( _oughta have laced that kid's milk with coffee, stunted his growth_ ) and his elbow crooked over his eyes, dead to the world. Lucky son-of-a-bitch. Dean can tell already he won't be sleeping tonight, not unless he kicks back a couple Valium. And what with ( _having seen Cas lost in a drugged-out haze_ ) being on the Most Wanted List for Heaven _and_ Hell, that don't strike him as the best idea in the world. Insomnia it is. Again.

He settles down, sitting propped up against the headboard of the bed ( _fully dressed, ready to run at a moment's notice_ ), a couple fingers of cheap whiskey in a clouded glass. Digs through his pockets for the ticket stub where he noted down Castiel's number and texts him their location. Not that he's expecting the dude to show. It's just in case.

At the bottom of his duffel there's a dog-eared copy of _On The Road_ that he picked up a couple weeks back at some second-hand bookshop in the middle of Illinois. Must be the tenth time he's read that book, it's like sitting down for a beer with an old friend now. No need to mark his place, he just opens it at random and starts reading, one eye on his sleeping brother.

It's a damn good thing Dean knows the book so well, because he can't focus on it for shit tonight. His mind is so full. Filled to overflowing with ( _CROATOAN_ ) words inked in blood on walls, with ( _Cas_ ) slow narcotic smiles, and two gaunt little girls ( _sisters, look after your sister_ ) holding shotguns. With his alter ego ( _plugging some Croat_ ) gunning down a man in cold blood and sending ( _Cas_ ) his people to die.

With his brother ( _I win, so … I win_ ) all in white.

He just. Yeah. Can't focus. His mind keeps on going around and around, a trapped animal pacing in its cage. A machine whirring relentlessly on until he's coming out of his skin because, Christ, it won't fucking _stop_. Perpetual motion.

It reminds him of the sound of the Pit, that constant background radiation of wheels turning, wheels within wheels within wheels, and the screaming of the souls and the cursed heartbeat of Hell beneath his feet. The noise that never stopped.

Fuck, he shouldn't have thought of ( _Hell Alastair the rack the razor)_ that.

Dean's hands don't shake when he grabs his glass and tosses the rest of his whiskey down. They don't. The stuff burns going down, what can you expect when you buy it under the counter in a dry goddamn county, but it's not enough. Not enough to pull him out of his head.

He wants to get back in the shower. Turn up the pressure until it's painful, wash until he feels clean again. But if there's one thing he learnt in those first few weeks after Castiel ( _gripped him tight_ ) brought him back, it’s that even if he scrubs himself red raw it won't change a damn thing. The filth is too deep in him for that.

Another generous measure of whiskey. For a moment he closes his eyes, pressing the pads of his thumbs into them until dark lights jump across his vision. Listens to the slow soft rise-and-fall of Sam's steady breathing.

When he opens his eyes again he brushes his palm over Sam's forehead. Very lightly, just enough of a touch to muss that ridiculous still-damp hair a little, to feel the warmth of his brow. Dean can remember doing this as a kid, when he was four or five and the only thing that could calm him in the dead of night was holding the baby, a weight in his arms that held him down to the here and now, the crown of the baby's head a reassuring heat under his hand.

Dean remembers Sam's skin gone cold and waxy and lifeless blue-grey. Remembers laying him out on an ancient mattress in one of Bobby's bolt-holes as though he were sleeping and then sitting in the dark, listening to the deafening silence. The vast absence where the metronomic sound of his breathing should have been.

With a heavy whuffle through his nose, Sam ( _if not the insomniac Dean is, ever a restless sleeper_ ) tosses himself over onto his side. The worn-thin t-shirt he's wearing rides up as he goes, revealing the thick stripe of dull pink scar tissue that still bisects the base of his spine.

All of a sudden Dean can't breathe. He reaches out and yanks the hem of Sam's shirt down to cover the scar. Sam makes a vague swiping motion with one arm, says something like, "Frough uhrff."

Dean figures that translates to _Fuck off_ , and smiles in spite of himself. That's Sammy, alright. Belligerent even when he's asleep. That's Sammy. Alive and well and cussing in his sleep.

From the days when Dean's deal was coming due, and after that, when Castiel gave him a second chance, this has been what's kept him ( _just about_ ) sane. Sitting up in the dark, focusing every inch of his consciousness down to this: his brother. His little brother, huge and infuriating and _alive_. That's what he went down to crossroads for, what he went down to the Pit for, what lets him live with himself. His brother is alive and well. That's all that matters.

Except. Except for the first time in Dean's ( _seventy_ ) thirty years, that's not enough.

Not now he's seen the way all the world will pay if Dean can't keep his father's dying wish. See his brother saved or see him dead.

Christ. He can't think about this. Not tonight.

He wants another drink but that ain't a good idea. Instead he gets up off of the bed, pads over to dig through the side pocket of Sam's duffel for a cigarette ( _started smoking again the minute he kicked the demon blood_ ). Sure enough, there's a half-full pack of Marlboro Reds tucked in with the heavy metal lighter Bobby gave Sam for Christmas a couple years back. Dean lights up, and then behind him the air constricts with the beat of phantom wings, so sudden he about has a heart attack. "Goddammit, Cas, warn a guy, can't you? I nearly died, fuck."

"Dean," Castiel says, nothing more. Same way he always says it. Like there's whole worlds of meaning behind that one word, like it's the only word he'd ever need, if Dean could only understand him.

Dean runs the pad of his thumb over the Devils' Trap engraved on the front of Sam's lighter. Takes a deep breath and turns to face Cas.

The sight of Cas – _his_ Cas – standing there, not a foot from Dean's bed, draped in that absurd grubby trench coat, arms hanging all awkward at his sides, it hits Dean harder than he'd expected. He swallows hard on whatever it was he was going to say. Can't remember a thing. Stupid angel and his stupid pretty face, fuck it all.

Cas squints at him, blue eyes confused but sharp and clear as the sky of a North Dakota winter. And Dean thinks, _yeah_. He can't say there wasn't something ( _hot_ ) endearing about that scruffy-cheeked, vague-eyed stoner version of Cas, but he wasn't _right_. Wasn't right at all. "You seem … agitated."

"No, really?" Dean laughs, rubs at the back of his neck. Glances at Cas and then away. Can't meet that inhumanly steady gaze for long. He takes a drag on his stolen cigarette, sits down on the edge of the bed, elbows propped on his knees, head hanging. "I'm just – all that shit Zachariah threw at me, I can't – I can't sleep, Cas. I'm running on, like, six hours in four days, and I can't fucking sleep, so yeah. I'm a little agitated."

Cas takes an awkward two steps forward to stand beside Dean. His hand hovers, tentative, in the air, the first two fingers extended. "I could make you sleep. If you wish it."

There are calluses on Castiel's fingertips. Dean's never noticed that before. They leap out at him with hyper-real, sleep-deprived clarity, and suddenly he's fighting some instinct to lean into their touch. Not so Cas can Jedi mind-trick him into knocking out the z's, but so he knows what those roughened fingers feel like on his cheek, pushing through his hair. Press his face into Cas's wrist and breathe in the sharp angel smell of him.

"I'm – I'm good." He sits up, swallows, takes a drag on the cigarette. Waves it in Cas's general direction as he says, "I'm just – I'll be fine. Thanks, though, man. Appreciate it."

"You're welcome." The corners of Castiel's mouth crook up, and his fierce angel-of-the-Lord stare softens, his eyes crinkling, just a little.

Dean can't help but smile back. Something in his ( _heart_ ) gut twisting sweetly. Stupid fucking doe-eyed Cas. He looks down at his hands, rubs at the base of his right wrist where it's still raw from his alter ego's damn cuffs. _What's wrong with you, boy? Be a goddamn man about this, can't you?_

"Dean."

"Yeah, Cas?"

"Zachariah sent you five years into the future."

It's not a question. Cas knows. Dean told him, babbled he can't even remember what shit after the adrenaline wore off and the shock hit him like a freight train. He nods at Cas, makes a _go on_ gesture with his cigarette. Cas hesitates, shifts from one foot to the other. It's fascinating to Dean. Sometimes, Castiel is so very human, and sometimes, so very, _very_ , not. Sometimes both at once. "C'mon, spit it out, man."

And Cas looks him straight in the eye, and says, flat, "What did he show you? What did you see?"

"I – fuck, Cas." All of a sudden, Dean's mouth is dry. He goes to take a drag of his cigarette and nearly fumbles it.

Where does he begin? Where the fuck does he even begin?

Sam in a rose garden? Bobby's house in Sioux Falls, the floors thick with dust and the walls splintered with bullet holes? The ruin of Kansas City? A seven-year-old girl with deadened eyes and a gun that never left her hand?

And then. Then there's that shade of Cas, his smile that came so easy and so wrong, the bitterness underneath the layers of intoxication. The loneliness of him, even sitting in a cabin surrounded by women hanging on his every word. Fallen so very far.

And Dean's alter ego. His own alter ego and how he'd sent shivers down Dean's spine with how like Dad he was. His whiskey-roughened voice. His sub-zero smile as he talked about tortures and massacres, the blank, emotionless look in his eyes when he shot his friend. Like Dad, when he got to telling Dean stories about Vietnam, when he was so obsessed with revenge he had forgotten how to love.

More than each of them disturbed Dean alone, it was the two of them _together_ that truly set his skin to crawling. How they'd looked at one another – the way his brother and Ruby once did, like they were caught between killing each other and dying for each other. And yeah, Dean understands loving someone while not liking them much, he does, feels like that about his ( _father_ ) brother sometimes, but this. This seemed … not the same.

When he was in Cas's cabin, even ready to drop of exhaustion and still a mite hungover from his concussion, he'd noticed things. Couldn't help it. Dad drilled it into him and it's sheer force of habit by now. So yeah, he noticed things.

A flask of holy water and a rosary stowed under the bed, where he always puts them. Two green jackets, peas-in-a-pod, thrown over the back of a chair. On the bedside table, a dog-eared copy of _Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Sea_ , propped open the way Dean leaves books he's coming back to, and in the first drawer ( _okay, he peeked while Cas went out to look for some food_ ) out-of-date condoms and lube. And when he laid out to try for a couple hours of sleep, the bed had smelled familiar. Like himself.

It figures. It fucking figures. Castiel went down to Hell for Dean's sake. Got himself kicked out of Heaven for Dean's sake. And that – that goddamn Mirror Universe version of him, of course the bastard wouldn't give a shit about touching Cas, about dragging something so ( _beautiful_ ) innocent right down into the mud alongside him. Just like he didn't give a shit about trying to find Sam, lifting a damn finger to take care of his brother. Fuck.

John had trusted Dean, even though he was there to watch all of Dean's fuck ups, even after he tried to ( _beat them out of him)_ teach him better. The same way Castiel trusts him, when the first time he saw Dean was with a razor in his hand, begging for Alastair's help. The way Sam trusts him enough to fall asleep, defenceless in the same room as a man he _knows_ was ordered to kill him, and could do it in a heartbeat if he had a mind to.

All that trust.

Dean's done failing people. Fuck all the angels and the demons and everyone who believes that's his destiny: to abandon his brother, to fail his ( _angel_ ) best friend. Fuck all that. He's done.

He can be better than the vision in Lucifer's dark mirror. So that Sam won't be lost. So that if the day ever comes that Cas does reach out to touch his face from love and not from duty, he might deserve that touch.

He exhales in a long ripple of blue smoke, and turns his face up to Cas.

"It doesn't matter. I'm not going to let it happen."

* * *

 

**Fin.**

**9 th August 2013 – 27th November 2014**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Demolition has been over a year in the making. Writing it has been at times stressful and frustrating, but overall an incredible experience and journey for me. I am so glad I embarked on this ridiculous project.
> 
> Thanks are owed to Jessica, who has never watched Supernatural but has encouraged me and helped me with all my writing across the last 7 years, Shari, who has, and for the last 12 years been my partner in literary sin, and Jules, who beta'd the first part of this fic and encouraged me throughout the writing of it while accusing me of ruining her life because feels [and who just told me my end notes should be "an apology letter to all of humanity". bless you.]. Whatever skill I have as a writer would be much reduced without these three darlings.
> 
> If you have read this entire fic - thank you, I am sorry, and I appreciate you with the intensity of a thousand fiery suns. Do please come find me on [tumblr.](http://capricorn-child.tumblr.com/)
> 
> My pretentious little chapter epigraphs are quotations as follows:  
>  **Angels In The Night** \- Stephen King, _Lisey's Story_  
>  **Heavyweight Showdown In Detroit** \- Kill Hannah, _The Collapse_  
>  **Zachariah Bites Back** \- Kill Hannah, _Vultures_  
>  **Croatoan Rising** \- Alice In Chains, _The Rooster_  
>  **Runs In The Family** \- Blue October, _Weight Of The World_  
>  **Home** \- Muse, _Butterflies And Hurricanes_  
>  **Made Of Stone** \- Nine Inch Nails, _My Violent Heart_  
>  **NOLA** \- My Chemical Romance, _I Never Told You What I Do For A Living_  
>  **Made Of Ice** \- Evanescence, _Weight Of The World_  
>  **Breaking Apart** \- Nine Inch Nails, _Love Is Not Enough_  
>  **In The Hot Zone** \- Mountain Goats, _No Children_  
>  **The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death** \- Slipknot, _Snuff_  
>  **Arrow Of Time** \- 30 Seconds To Mars, _Stranger In A Strange Land_  
>  **The End** \- Kill Hannah, _The Collapse_  
>  **Epilogue** \- Nine Inch Nails, _Hurt_


End file.
